OPERATION: Break the Dawn
by katinki
Summary: An experimental weapon, one of the most lethal chemicals ever created, has been stolen. Its final destination is unknown, but there's no doubt the powerful faction behind the theft is intent on one thing: War. But they didn't count on a fight. A team of Marines, led by Capt. Edward Cullen and accompanied by Dr. Isabella Swan, isn't about to let the world go up in flames. AH.
1. Chapter 1

Stephanie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale **are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**OPERATION:  
****BREAK THE DAWN**

**Summary:** An experimental weapon, one of the most lethal chemicals ever created, has been stolen. Its final destination is unknown, but there's no doubt the powerful faction behind the theft is intent on one thing: War. But they didn't count on a fight. A team of Marines, led by Capt. Edward Cullen and accompanied by Dr. Isabella Swan, a top DARPA scientist, isn't about to let the world go up in flames.

* * *

**June 4**  
**Undisclosed Location **  
**Somewhere in the Middle East**

A second spray of bullets hit the back of the Humvee, a high, metallic _tink-tink-tink! _over the roar of the engine.

Captain Edward Cullen, United States Marine Corps, looked up from the young, twenty-something man bleeding out on the floor and yelled, "Blondie!"

"I'm on it!" she yelled back, already sliding up through the hole. With an angry curse, the six-foot-one gunnery sergeant, a blue-eyed blonde who looked more like a model than a soldier, swung the .50 caliber mounted machine gun around and peppered the windshield of the first attack vehicle behind them.

In the rear view, Edward watched the two trailing black Humvees swerve to the left and abruptly jerk back to the right, barely holding the edge of the road. But they were still there, still following and closing fast.

He barked an order to the corporal behind the wheel. "Jazz, what the fuck are you waiting for? This guy's gonna bleed out!" Edward glanced down at the red stain spreading across the man's abdomen, soaking the ragged remains of a dirty white oxford that bore the initials, _A. W. D._, on the left front pocket.

Close-range gut shot, meant to kill, slowly and painfully, Edward spat. And the damned thing wouldn't stop bleeding. Any more pressure, and he'd wind up cracking the man's ribs. "Forget the fucking sand, Jazz!" he barked again, barely heard over the gunfire above them. "Move it!"

"Yes, sir," the corporal answered, white-knuckling the steering wheel as he stamped the gas pedal to the floor. The wheels spun for a split second, but then the vehicle jerked forward, gaining speed and kicking up a wall of sand and dust.

Motioning for the massive, bear-sized sergeant across from him to take over compression, Edward grabbed the radio and glanced up to the sky. "Tink? Where are you? What you got?"

Static blared before a high, out-of-place soprano burst through. "Captain, you got a roadblock at 5 klicks. Light armor only. All black and with the same weird emblem on the hoods. Want me to take 'em out or get these bitches on your tail?"

"Do it! Clear that goddamned road!"

High overhead, there was the sudden loud whir of chopper blades as Alice's AH-1Z Viper shot ahead, turning into nothing more than a dark speck against the bright blue Arabian sky.

There was another loud _tink-tink-tink! _of bullets popping off their armor.

"Who are these guys?" Emmett growled over the answering barrage of Rosalie's M2. "Where the fuck did they all come from?"

"Hell, if I know," Edward yelled back. There was another loud volley of bullets from the top of their Humvee, and when he stole a look behind them, the front chaser abruptly jumped sideways before flipping off the road and exploding into a mangled mass of black steel, red flames, and smoke. No one was walking away from that. "They were _not_ supposed to be there." Louder, directed up at the woman manning their machine gun, he called out, "Good hit!"

"Fucking right," Rosalie shouted down before re-aiming the gun at the lone black vehicle still behind them. "Come on, you assholes! Lemme show you what I got!"

Back down inside their own vehicle, eying the unconscious, bruised, and bleeding man beneath his paw of a fist, Emmett mouthed, "He gonna live?"

Edward frowned at the pool of blood on the Humvee's floor before answering the sergeant. It would be a miracle, he thought, considering the blood loss, not to mention the fact that half the bones in his body looked like they'd been systematically broken. He had quarter-sized burns all up and down his arms and chest, too.

"Hope so. General said he's important, some kinda weapons wunderkind from DARPA. Didn't give me much else. Kid was mumbling something about X-Agents when I plucked him out of that pit."

Emmett swore a blue streak.

"No kidding."

Behind them, there was a loud explosion – the second chaser. Before he could turn to look, far ahead, through the dusty windshield, Edward caught sight of two parallel white cloud trails streaking across the sky. The trails ended with a bright flash of white light. In the split second when he blinked, a ball of black, smoking fire erupted with a boom that rocked the ground. Their Humvee shuddered, but didn't slow.

"She get 'em, Captain?" Jasper ground out, not slowing as the heavy vehicle careened around a sharp curve in the road.

Alice's voice came on the com. "All clear, Captain! Nothing in your way but fucking desert."

.

.

.

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**Notes:**

**1: **this will be written like a normal fic. This first "chapter" is essentially an introduction or prologue, hence its shorter length. The rest of the chapters will be longer.

**2:** this is fiction of the action/thriller variety and is written for the express purpose of entertainment, not for accuracy (though I tend to try pretty hard when I can). I'll be taking some liberties regarding current rules, regulations, and protocol within our Armed Services (for example: women in combat). Some of the weaponry in here doesn't actually exist (yet). And I'll be making up some science, too. Therefore, kiddos, I wouldn't advise using this story as a reference for any kind of book report.

**3:** there be graphic violence, adult language and themes, and maybe a little sexin' in here, so mind that M rating and read accordingly. No other warnings will be provided.

**4:** Thanks for reading! I hope you'll all be joining me on this little ride! I'd love to hear your thoughts! :D


	2. Chapter 2

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale **are making sure they're ready for inspection.

Yeesh, that took entirely too long. Thanks for your patience while I a) finished up two charity compilation fics and b) took a much-needed extended vacation sans internet. I'd intended on updating before the vacation, but alas, a mortar round ate my homework. Damn those mortars.

* * *

**June 8  
Home of Staff Sergeant Emmett McCarty **  
**Falls Church, Virginia**

"You're gonna burn 'em."

A pair of well-used tongs flipped through the air, bounced off the lip of the grill, and clanged on the newly laid flagstone patio.

"Damn it, Tink!"

With a high, soprano laugh, First Lieutenant Alice Brandon – a pale, dark-haired, big-eyed sprite of a woman – needled the massive man beside her between the ribs, quickly darting backward with an impish grin and the grace of a dancer to outmaneuver his retaliatory swat. "Gotta work on those reflexes, Bear-man."

"I'll show you reflexes, Little Bit," Emmett barked back, lunging and, like always, missing as Alice abruptly feinted left, then right, and then ducked. "Get back here!"

"You better be watching those flank steaks instead," she teased, slipping beneath his outstretched paw to needle him again. "I'm starving, and you promised to feed us."

"God, how do you eat so much? Do you have a tapeworm or something?" With one last half-assed swipe and a shake of his newly shorn head, Emmett gave up chase to burrow down into a banged up red and white cooler that was, for the most part, permanently stationed by the grill this time of year. When he found his target – an ice cold, amber-colored long neck – he grinned. "Hell, you're not even half of me but you eat twice as much." And at somewhere north of six-foot-five and packing a solid two hundred and fifty pounds of nothing but muscle, that was a feat.

"Impossible," a new, low, and undeniably feminine voice suddenly called from behind them. "You can eat a damned horse."

"About time you got here," Alice snickered, her lips curving upward when her gaze flitted from the wide-eyed, instantly discomfited expression on Emmett's face to the tall blonde stepping through the sliding glass door.

Then again, it wasn't like anyone could blame him for staring. Dressed in her usual civvies, consisting of nothing more than loose khaki cargoes, a fitted white tee, and a high, low-maintenance ponytail, Gunnery Sergeant Rosalie Hale still looked like a super model straight out of some glossy fashion magazine. Granted, she was the kind of super model who occasionally had the demeanor of a rabid pit bull, not to mention the second best target scores in the entire battalion, but a knock-out nonetheless.

"I brought dessert. Oh, and by the way, traffic on 66 was a motherfucker," Rosalie growled, crossing the patio to slap a large foil covered pan down on the wrought iron picnic table.

Alice and Emmett made similar faces and muttered in unison, "When is it not?"

"Right? I swear, I'd kill people – well, a lot more of them – if I had to drive that road on a regular basis," she said, spinning toward Emmett to pluck the beer out of his hand.

"Hey, gimme that. That's not fo–"

As she cracked the cap, one brow arched and the left corner of her mouth pulled up. "Wanna fight me for it? I could use a few rounds about now." Her blue eyes danced. "Best of three."

"Fuck it, take it," he mumbled, stooping down to dig through the ice again. "Just wait til everyone else leaves and I'll show you…"

"What was that?"

"Nothing, doll-face," Emmett replied, looking up with a too-sweet flash of teeth and a slow, mischievous wink. Barely avoiding the toe of Rosalie's boot aimed at his calf, he laughed and twisted right, dragging the cooler half way across the flagstone.

"Anyway…" Shaking her head, Alice motioned toward the darkening, soon-to-be unrecognizable slabs of meat and the swirls of silver smoke. Her nose scrunched at the stink of char. "He's burning the food. _Again_. Do something, will ya?"

Emmett's chest puffed out, stretching the ancient, frayed olive drab tee he always wore at nights and on weekends. "I am not! Do you guys have any idea what kind of bacteria there is in undercooked meat?" Ignoring Alice's instant peal of laughter, he grabbed a fork from the table, stabbed the nearest steak with blackened edges, and held it up like a trophy. "Now _this_ is how you're supposed to cook beef. Well done. Not a hint of _e. coli_."

"Oh, my God, it's like a rock!"

Rosalie rolled her eyes and made a choking sound behind her palm. The split-second, private look that followed between the blonde and their anti-bacterial _chef_ _du jour_, however, wasn't missed. At least not by Alice.

_Five bucks on who's sleeping over tonight_, she thought with a wicked grin. Not exactly prohibited, but certainly not encouraged. And _definitely_ not something the Captain needed to know.

"What are you grinning at?"

"Nuh-_thing!_" Alice sang as she dropped down to one of the curved stone benches ringing the patio. Turning, she swung her legs over and hopped down to the freshly mowed grass. Crisscrossed and all. Smiling at the small, neat, post-War home that Emmett had babied between the seemingly endless stream of missions over the last two years, she kicked off her flip flops and targeted the right side of the house with a wave, tossing over her shoulder, "Yell when you're ready. I'm gonna see if the Captain has killed poor Jazzy yet."

Clinking their beers, the two sergeants both laughed at that. "Poor kid doesn't stand a chance!"

As soon as Alice hit the edge of the house, from around the side came a barrage of sound. There was the rough scrape and squeak of tennis shoes on asphalt, two male voices – arguing between heaving breaths – and then the rhythmic _thump-thump-thump_ of a basketball. A second later, there was a loud, rattling bang, followed by the groan of the old metal rim.

"Damn it!"

Sweating and shirtless, both hardened and lean in the way that only came from time spent training and in the field, Captain Edward Cullen and Corporal Jasper Whitlock circled each other around a makeshift basketball court. When Alice slipped by and slumped down in the lounger by the driveway, neither Marine broke concentration or gave any hint that they had noticed the new arrival.

Jasper spat on the pavement before shoving the ball back at the other man.

"What's that again, Jazz?" Edward's emerald eyes twinkled as he started dribbling.

The younger man spat again and pushed sweat-wet curls of blond hair out of his line of sight. "Whatever, man."

With a slow, almost predatory smile, Edward casually passed the ball back and forth between his legs, walking the perimeter of the faded, chalk-drawn arch. "No… I think it's now… 19-15, right? Or is it 20-15? I can't remember."

"Just shoot, asshole."

Edward laughed before lazily elbowing inside the line. "That's Captain Asshole to you."

"Then just shoot, _Captain_ Asshole." With a grunt, Jasper shouldered back and lunged for the ball, only to miss when Edward abruptly reversed and blocked him with his back and hips.

Glancing over his shoulder, that predatory smile widened. "Oh, you asked for it, _Corporal_…"

From the sideline, Alice leaned forward and just held in a laugh, knowing this particular game and its ending all too well. With a smooth, graceful kind of fluidity, Edward made a couple of sluggish feints and slowed his dribbling, each thump of the ball deliberate and drawing his opponent's attention away from his face and feet. Following the target, Jasper batted at the ball, leaning right, and like a flipped switch, without warning, those lazy, slow movements suddenly erupted in a burst of dizzying speed and motion. Almost too fast to follow, there was a blur of tanned limbs, a half dozen muffled grunts, curses, and _Umph!_s, and then the clean snick of the net.

"Shit, you're fast," Jasper panted, folded in half and bracing his palms on his knees.

Edward snorted, blindly chucking the ball against the backboard and into the basket again. "Nah, man. It was a good game. You're pretty quick."

Jasper huffed and wiped his face. "You say that because you won. Again."

Alice giggled from her lounger. "Lemme guess, he didn't bother mentioning that they tried to recruit him away from Canoe U., did he?"

Edward's lips turned up into a smirk as he sailed the ball through the net one more time. "That was a long time ago, Tinkadee. I'm getting old and I'm slow as shit now."

"Old, maybe, but slow, my ass," Jasper mumbled, still doubled over and panting.

The taunt Alice would have thrown died on her tongue when Edward suddenly turned to the left and stretched his arms over his head, arching his back. At just the right angle, the late afternoon sun caught the almost iridescent sheen of the old jagged scar that cut the captain's bare torso in half, beginning just below the left shoulder, crossing his sternum, and then trailing all the way down the right side of his abdomen until it disappeared beneath the low slung waistband of his shorts. On his left side, less obvious but still visible, there were half a dozen smaller, irregular explosions of white on tan, some of which she'd seen in action, others of which had been earned long before he'd been assigned to lead their team.

_Badges_, the Captain always called them, joking like being held captive and tortured to near death was par for the course. For their team, she supposed it could be, but that was one of those things they didn't talk about too often.

"Come and get it!" Emmett suddenly bellowed from the behind the house.

Ignoring the way Alice's caramel eyes dropped when he caught her staring, instinctively knowing where her mind had drifted, Edward made a show of sniffing the air. When she looked across the driveway again, he chuckled as he tugged a faded polo over his head. "So just how burned are they?"

Forcing a smile when Jasper grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the chair, and then smiling for real when he held on a little longer than necessary, Alice shook her head. "I think he was going for refractory this time."

"That's it." Glancing up the cloudless sky, Edward sighed as the three made their way to the backyard. "Next Saturday, we're at my house and we're doing ribs. Em's not allowed within ten feet of the grill."

Ten minutes later, after a quick search through the cooler and a hasty set-up of the old table Emmett had salvaged from the scrap heap and brought back to life, five Marines raised their bottles. Nodding to each member of his team, Edward grinned and toasted a now-familiar line, "After three straight months in one hellhole or another, here's to two weeks of doing jack shit!"

The bottles clinked with a loud, "Ooh rah!"

As they dug in, each attempting to saw through Emmett's version of well done, Jasper paused and glanced up from his plate. "Did you hear anything more, Captain?" He hesitated, licking his lips. "About that guy from DARPA?"

Edward looked up to find a pair of shrewd, calculating slate gray eyes behind that hesitation. Not surprising that the question on everyone's mind would come from him, he thought. While the newest member of their team and the greenest in the field, Jasper Whitlock had aced every strategic test the Corps had thrown his way and he hadn't done it by just waiting around to be told.

He frowned before responding. "Doesn't look good." Seeing that everyone else had stopped eating and were fully trained on whatever answers he had to offer, Edward laid his utensils down and ran a hand through his still-damp hair. "Talked to the General the day after we got back in. They're keeping this pretty close, so he wouldn't say much. But he said the kid probably won't – or by now, _didn't_ – make it." Involuntarily, Edward's hand dropped to his side where he could feel the edge of one of his scars through the worn cotton of his shirt. "Least we got him out of there and brought him home, ya know? Least he didn't die in that fuckin' pit. No American – no_ one _– deserves that kind of death."

Clearing his throat, Emmett leaned back in his chair and quietly asked, "Did he say anything about why he was taken?"

Recalling all too well the brief conversation they'd had while racing through the Arabian Desert, chased by a bullet-popping force no one had anticipated, a long second passed before Edward shook his head. "Didn't say. But it's pretty clear the guy was working on something big, though. _Real_ big." Edward's jaw twitched. "You don't inflict that kind of systematic damage on someone over something small. They were looking for something important."

In the back of Edward's mind, he heard the distorted, pain-induced pleas that the young man had uttered as he'd hauled him bodily out of the pitch black, twenty-four inch well that, judging by the smell, he'd been hidden in for what had to have been weeks.

"_No!"_

"_Sir, I've got you. My name is Edward Cullen. I'm with the United States Marine Corps. Hold on, we're getting you out of here right now."_

"_No! He knows!"_

"_Sir, it's all right. We're getting you to safety. We've got you."_

"_He knows it… the formula… XR5… new agent… unstable… but enough… he knows… God, he knows it… Oh, God… kill me, please! I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… I couldn't… too much… you can't stop it!" _

"Do they know who was behind it?" Rosalie asked, crossing her arms and mimicking the big man's pose.

Edward blinked. "Maybe… maybe not. I asked around a little… No one recognizes – or admits to recognizing – that symbol we found. They're saying it's something new. Some new faction that's surfaced, but no one seems to know what they're up to, other than nothing good. They don't even have a name for 'em yet."

Alice's brow folded and she flicked her thumb in an unconscious trigger motion. "What's that mean for us?"

"For us?"

"Is this it for us on this one? Or do you think we'll get called in?"

Seeing the bright red pool that now stained the floor of their Humvee, Edward grimaced and jabbed his fork into his steak. "That's above all our pay grades."

* * *

**June 9  
Marine Corps Base Quantico**  
**Quantico, Virginia **

"Have a seat, Captain."

There was always an edge – a barely perceptible wryness perhaps – when the two men addressed each other by rank.

"Yes, sir," Edward said. When the other man sat, he shifted his cover and took the straight-backed leather chair opposite the desk. In the center of the room, facing both the general and the rows of stern-faced men that lined the wall – other Marines who'd held this post – it wasn't what Edward called a welcoming position. And even with the fan blowing, the office was hot and stuffy, not enough to outright sweat but enough to make it uncomfortable and to call attention to the stiff, scratchy fabric around his neck. How people wore this shit every day, he couldn't fathom. Then again, it'd been months since Edward had had to pull out his Alphas.

Longer since he'd been called onto base for an official debriefing.

Far more at ease in their setting, the blond man with ash at his temples settled back in his chair. Despite his advancing years, he was lean beneath the uniform, as tough as nails, and he possessed the comportment and command to match the stars and the rows of decoration on the left breast of his jacket. The general crossed an ankle over the opposite knee and eyed the younger captain over steepled fingers.

"You need a haircut," he finally said.

Edward's brows lifted before he acknowledged the rebuke. "Yes, sir. It's next on my list."

"Smart ass." There was a long second of tense silence, wherein the only sound in the room was that of the whirring fan. The general's shoulders abruptly relaxed, and with a low chuckle and shake of his head, he cracked a stretching smile that wrinkled the corners of his ice blue eyes. "By the way, your aunt is pissed that you haven't called her yet. She told me to tell you that if you didn't stop by soon, there would be hell to pay."

With an instant grin and duck of his head, Edward raked a hand through his hair, ruining all his earlier efforts at taming the dark, coppery mess. "_Shit._ Can't you tell her I've been busy?"

"You really think I'm that stupid?" Lieutenant General Carlisle Cullen rolled his eyes at his nephew. "I think she wants to fix you dinner. Told me you were too skinny last time you were over."

"She thinks everyone is skinny," Edward laughed. "But I'll take her cooking over mine any day. How about Friday night?"

Carlisle didn't answer immediately, and his attention fell to the two quarter-inch thick manila folders stacked in the center of his desk. Following the general's gaze, Edward easily made out the spread-eagle DoD seal stamped on the top folder, as well as the smudged red and black lettering in the bottom corners. His shoulders straightened again and he nodded once in understanding. "I take it I won't be around Friday night?"

"Sorry, son. I'm afraid not."

Edward shrugged. "This is related to that kid from DARPA?"

Before Carlisle could answer, there was a sharp rap on the door.

"Enter."

When the door swung open, a man and a woman walked in, each too efficient in their movements and alert to their surroundings to be civilians. A quick assessment showed matching black cases and both wore dark, nondescript suits that meant little to the outside world, but for Edward, gave him all the confirmation he needed.

"General," the man greeted, nodding before quickly surveying the room. His gaze slipped past Edward and then jumped back to take a longer look. With brown hair, brown eyes, a medium build, and an indeterminate age, the man was the ideal operative, Edward thought.

Carlisle inclined his head to the man. "Special Agent Peter Dalton. From Langley," he returned, glancing back to Edward, before offering a brief smile to the strawberry blonde beside him. "And Special Agent Charlotte Cameron. Please, have a seat…." Carlisle motioned to Edward and then to the two agents. "You likely haven't met Captain Cullen. He leads a… special group that we house within Force Recon."

Agent Dalton leaned forward with instant interest. "No, sir, we haven't met. But we've certainly heard of a few of the Ghost's… _exploits_." He uttered Edward's call sign almost in a whisper, and, eyeing the captain, he offered a smile. "Your and your team's reputations precede you."

Edward's jaw ticked. "Thank you, sir. I'm sure my team, especially my Gunny, will be more than happy to hear it."

Dalton's smile widened as the woman beside him interrupted, "Captain, we appreciate you extracting Dr. Biers. From what we understand from your report…" She paused and her pale, aquiline features pinched. "The situation was far more challenging than anticipated, and frankly, that's saying a lot."

"It's what we do, ma'am."

She regarded him slowly, and Edward had the distinct impression that a test – one with rules he was unaware of – was being administered. "Did Dr. Biers survive?" he asked after a moment.

Agent Cameron's face pinched again, but then cleared with a conscious square of her shoulders. "Unfortunately not."

Eyes dropping to his lap, Edward frowned.

This time it was Dalton who interjected. "We're still grateful you were able to locate him and bring him back. Your team should have been contacted earlier. Perhaps the outcome would have been different."

Edward shifted to stare at the general, who'd been silent since the introductions. His mouth was set in a hard, uncompromising line that Edward had learned as a boy. "How long did they have him, General?"

"The Secretary and the CIA brought me in three weeks ago, the day before I sent your orders." Carlisle's eyes narrowed. "But from what I understand _now_, he was taken a few weeks before that."

Edward swore under his breath. A hundred questions and accusations sat on the tip of his tongue.

Clearing her throat, Agent Cameron addressed him again. "Captain, we know that you and your team just went on leave, a very deserved break considering how long you've been out in the field. But we're in need of your assistance again."

"Why my team, if I may ask? There are others who do similar jobs and who are likely fresher. We've been going for months now and my people are tired."

"There are others, yes." She hesitated. "But yours is the best. You're small, lethal, lightning fast, and your record speaks for itself. We need the best right now."

His brows drew together and he looked to Carlisle again. "Another extraction?"

There was a long pause.

"Sir?"

"No." The general shook his head and wiped his eyes in a rare show of stress. Waving at the pair of agents, he sighed and said, "Go ahead. Bring her in. This is your show."

Thirty seconds later, Edward stood as the door swung open again, this time revealing a slender, almost frail-looking slip of woman – a civilian by dress and tired posture and somewhere close to his own thirty-three years in age. Hidden behind a curtain of thick chestnut hair, he could just make out the outline of a fine, nearly bone-white face, heart-shaped, with a pair of lips that looked blood red against the paleness of her complexion. When she looked up and shoved her hair behind her ear, a pair of wide, haunted eyes ringed by shadows stared back at him. Were she not so terrified, he'd have called her beautiful.

"Gentlemen," Agent Dalton began. "This is Dr. Isabella Swan… Dr. Swan?" He gestured toward the general and then to Edward. "General Cullen and… Captain Cullen."

"Pleased to meet you," the woman answered, nervously, hands twisting together. "Ah… _sirs_."

Edward fought the involuntary twitch of his lips. Wrong time, wrong situation, and wrong pair of lips, he thought, tearing his eyes away from hers. "I don't understand," he directed at the agent beside him.

As they reclaimed their seats, Agent Cameron cracked open her briefcase to extract a file. When she passed it to Edward, he noted that the weight, the thickness, and the outside markings and seal were identical to the file on the general's deck. "Dr. Swan and Dr. Biers worked together," she explained. "Same areas, same projects, same… expertise."

Edward froze. "That area would be?"

The woman's dark gaze lapped the room before settling on Edward again. Something moved in her haunted eyes and her skin pulled tight over her cheekbones. "Advanced Weapons Division."

_A.W.D. _

"And the… expertise?"

"Before Riley – _Dr. Biers_ – was… taken," Dr. Swan started, swallowing. "We were working on…" Abruptly, she stopped and tilted her head. "Captain, what do you know about chemical and biological agents?"

He scowled at the file in his hand. "More than I'd like, ma'am. Enough to stay the hell away from them."

The ghost of a smile lit her lips before she nodded. "So, you know about VX, right?"

Every Marine knew about VX. "Nerve agent. Consistency of motor oil. Can be transmitted dermally or if atomized, via inhalation," he ticked off. "Ten times more toxic than sarin."

Dr. Swan took a deep breath. "As far as anyone else knows, V-Series are essentially as high as they go, nerve agent-wise…"

Edward's eyes widened. "I take it that's not the case anymore." It was a statement, not a question.

Rubbing her forehead, she closed her eyes and mumbled, "No, not anymore… there's the XR-Series… And XR5…" Dr. Swan trailed off.

Dr. Biers' voice screamed through Edward's head, forcing him to grip the armrest. "They know how to make it?"

Her eyes flashed open with a flinch. "Maybe… it was unstable… we couldn't get it to stabilize for more than a week. But Riley was… so very close to correcting the issue."

"Just how potent is it?"

"If VX is ten times more toxic than sarin…" She blew out a short, harsh breath of air. "XR5 is… multiply that by… a hundred… a thousand maybe. At microgram levels, it completely shuts down the entire nervous system. Your lungs seize and unlike sarin or VX, you die… _immediately_. You can't get atropine in your system fast enough to counter it. It can level cities in… an hour. It's…"

"_Fuck." _Shooting up from his chair, Edward paced the length of the room twice before turning to face the two CIA agents, each wearing their own horrified expressions despite the fact that they'd heard all this before. "You know who's behind this?"

Agent Dalton spoke first. "We haven't seen this group before and no one's speaking up, taking credit, or advertising. The channels are pretty much silent. We're guessing it's an intermediate – someone who's planning to either turn the material over to another larger group… or worse, sell it to the highest bidder. I think you can name a few of the likely bidders."

"Names? Pictures?"

"From what we picked up from Dr. Biers' apartment, three men grabbed him, all of whom were highly trained, far more so than your average desert hire. He was outside the border before we even had an idea he was gone and… people like Dr. Biers – and Dr. Swan – are under surveillance… 24/7."

Edward shook his head in frustration. "Is that it? You just know they're highly trained? _I_ told you that when I handed you the shot of that emblem and listed out his injuries."

Agent Cameron reached inside her case again, ignoring the narrowed eyes of her partner. "There's this, too," she said, pushing a dark, fuzzy satellite image across the desk. "You can't see much and we've crossed what we can get from the profile with every terrorist cell we know of. So far… nothing. We've talked to MI6, Mossad, you name it. No one knows."

Staring at the grainy image of a man with a sharp, prominent nose and long, light-colored hair pulled back in what looked like a ponytail, the tickle of déjà vu swept through his limbs.

"We need you and your team," Dalton said.

"Fine," Edward muttered, still staring at the image, willing the pixels to shrink and clear. "We'll be ready to go first thing tomorrow. I need a carrier for the Humvee and Alice's helo. I'll debrief my team and we'll work on plotting how to get back to the extraction site as a starting point."

General Cullen tossed him a second folder – this one stamped with the DARPA emblem. "Captain? There's one more thing."

Confused, Edward shoved the image inside the folder and laid his stack on the corner of the desk. "Sir?"

"We're placing one more member on your team."

Edward's frame went rigid as he looked from the general to the two CIA agents to his left. While more than capable operatives, he had no doubt, neither was anywhere close to being fit or trained for the kind of work his team performed. They'd be open, vulnerable – a liability to every man and woman within bullet range. "What? Sir…we don't operate like that… You know me… my team. They were hand picked. We've trained together. We fight together. We bleed together."

"You need a chemicals specialist."

He glared. "We've had the same training these agents have had. We know as much as they do, if not more. They'll get themselves killed. Or us."

Before the general or the agents could counter, the dark-haired scientist suddenly stood up, straightened her shoulders, and crossed her slender arms over her chest. The motion drew her loose-fitting shirt tighter around her upper body such that it framed curves Edward hadn't noticed before.

She stepped closer, enough that Edward had to tilt his head down to evaluate her expression. That same _something_ from before moved behind her tired eyes, and this time he recognized it.

_Anger. _

_Vengeance._

Emotions that could get a Marine killed, but ones he knew well.

"But none of you know XR5," she challenged, her voice strong, determined, absent any sign of the nerves she'd exhibited before. "_I_ do."

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes: **

* * *

**Glossary:**

_Alphas/Greens_ – or service uniforms, are one of the primary uniforms worn by Marines. They're the equivalent of a business suit, and the most recognizable on-base variant consists of green trousers with a khaki belt, a green jacket, a khaki long-sleeve button up shirt, a khaki tie, black shoes, and a hard-framed Barracks Cover.

[**edit:** I originally used "Greens" above as that's what my father said they called their service uniforms back in Vietnam. I've since changed it in the chapter above based on a couple of reviews to reflect the term used more often today, "Alphas"]

_Canoe U._ – nickname for the United States Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Maryland, and one of the three main sources for both Navy and Marine commissioned officers.

_Civies/civvies _– slang for ordinary / street clothes worn by military personnel.

_Cover_ – there are no 'hats' in the military. They're called covers.

_DARPA_ – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency responsible for the development of new military technologies.

_DOD/DoD_ – United States Department of Defense, an organization charged with oversight of virtually all agencies having to do with national security and defense, including all branches of the armed services.

_Force Recon/FORECON_ – is an abbreviation for United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance. The Force Recon companies are one of the Corps's elite special operations forces. They are comparable to Green Berets and SEALs in that they operate independently behind enemy lines, conduct direct action, are capable of performing in-extremis hostage rescue, etc.

_Ooh rah/oorah/Urah_ – expression of enthusiasm or greeting, used exclusively by the Marine Corps.

_Refractory_ – a type of brick used to insulate the inside of very high temperature furnaces.

_V-Series/VX_ – a class of nerve agents known for extremely high toxicity, VX being the most widely known and most toxic. They essentially attack the central nervous system, leading to system failure, and eventually, asphyxiation due to respiratory depression. Like other nerve agents, including sarin, cyclosarin, and GV, V-Series agents are classified by the UN as weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

_XR-Series/XR5_ – doesn't actually exist in real life. Remember me saying I'd be making up stuff?


	3. Chapter 3

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale** are making sure they're ready for inspection.

The Black Eyed Peas own _Where is the Love_.

* * *

**June 10**  
**Joint Base Langley-Eustis**  
**Hampton, Virginia**

"Turn around and move your arms a little."

Senior Staff Scientist Isabella Swan – Bella to any who knew her well – glanced over her shoulder to a mammoth of a man sitting on one of the stainless steel tables in the center of the room. Like everyone else she'd encountered over the last two days, his expression was stern, his focus absolute and measuring as he appraised her. Despite the severe countenance, somewhere in this guy's dark blue eyes, Bella swore she detected a hint of a smile, however, almost as though he found their whole situation mildly amusing.

The Marine's eyebrows climbed to his hairline, lifting a pair of slick-looking wraparound shades perched on top of his head. Bella nodded and turned. Facing a wall of nothing but shelves, each one stacked high with pixilated fabrics in beiges, browns, and greens, she stretched her arms high over her head, dropped them to her sides, and then slowly repeated the actions again.

Emmett crossed his arms over his chest. "Not too bad. Can you walk alright?"

"Yeah, I think so," Bella mumbled as she stared down at the thick, stiff material now snugly strapped around her upper body. The tactical vest was bulky, awkward, and it weighed a ton. Nothing like her lab coat. She twisted at the waist a few times, grimaced, and then crossed the length of the room. When she spun back around and lurched a little to the right, the big man frowned. "Okay, it's a _little_ heavy."

Pushing off the table, the staff sergeant approached her. With a stride almost twice the length of hers, his movements were quick and efficient, as though the matching body armor he'd donned in demonstration weighed nothing at all.

"But does it fit?" Emmett asked as he began cinching a couple of the beige straps at the woman's sides and shoulders, tightening the armor and in the process redistributing the weight such that it wouldn't be quite as bad on her shoulders. He stuck two fingers between the vest and her left shoulder and tugged. She was as thin as Alice. "Ought to be decently tight. No gaps."

"Yeah." After another couple of twists and attempts at touching her toes – _impossible_ – Bella made a face. "I _think_ so. It didn't move around as much that time."

"Good. You'll get used to the extra weight. If you don't…" Emmett shrugged, but one corner of his mouth lifted as he fitted a helmet, also in the same beige and brown _MARPAT_ patterning, on Bella's head. "Tough shit, you'll wear it anyway."

"I know." She attempted a smile. "Thanks."

Satisfied, he motioned for her to remove the gear. "What kind of shape you in?"

"What?"

Rubbing the back of his head, nearly bald until the short dark hair at the crown, Emmett squinted and waved at the too-slender woman standing in front of him. "Look, we don't usually cart around civilians… not even ones who come up with scary-ass shit that can melt your face off."

Bella winced. "It doesn't really do –"

He cut her a stare before lifting his face to the ceiling. His cheeks puffed out before he blew out a loud breath. "No offense or anything, but we don't really have any guidelines for this kind of operation, or for _you_, and God only knows what we're going to find when we get back to that extraction site. So I'm just trying to… figure out what we're going to have to deal with. The more I know about you, the better."

A nervous giggle bubbled out, and then another when Emmett scowled at her. "Sorry… No, it's fine. I understand." Bella shook her head. "I'm okay, I guess. I run five days a week. No asthma or heart problems or anything like that." She thought for a second. "I've hiked over half of the AT."

The sergeant studied her for a long moment, noting the looseness of her cammies, before finally looking away to point at the table. "You don't need a full load or anything. But this is some stuff I think you better have on you just in case. On the way over, I'll show you how some of it works."

Neatly laid out on the stainless top was a small cache of items: a pouch labeled _IFAK_, a canteen, flashlight, beige leather gloves, ballistics glasses, leatherman, and a handful of other objects Bella couldn't name. There were also three ATNAA kits, and those she knew about better than anyone.

One item was notably missing.

"Um, am I going to carry a…" Eyeing the table and its contents, she hesitated and chewed the inside of her cheek. "A gun?"

There was a second of absolute silence where Emmett's teeth clamped down on his lower lip, and then suddenly, his face broke into a wide grin that ran one hundred and eighty degrees counter to his earlier scowl. "Ah, _no_."

"But –"

Emmett bit back a laugh at the woman's instant responding indignation. "First, it's a _rifle_. Second, I doubt the Captain's going to go for anything like that." He laughed for real when Bella's eyes narrowed. "Plus, that's just more shit to carry anyway."

"What about a pistol?" she pressed, shoving her helmet underneath her arm. "You're probably right about me carrying a… _rifle_. But I read the report, okay? About Riley's… " Her throat bobbed once before she rushed through the rest. "_Rescue_ and all that you guys went through to get him out. I don't have any illusions about what I volunteered for... So I think it would be good for me to have… I don't know… _something_."

Shoulders still shaking, Emmett lifted his palms in mock surrender. "Tell you what, Doc, I'll let the Captain know you want a sidearm. If he says no, well…" His lips twitched, knowing full well how that argument would go. "I'll let you two sort it out." As he loaded Bella's gear into the network of webbing and small pouches affixed to her vest, under his breath, he added, "If he says yes, God help us."

Ignoring the remark she wasn't supposed to hear, Bella dipped her chin and stuck out a slightly quivering palm. "Deal." When Emmett took her small hand in his larger, calloused one and gave her a curious half-smile, she took a deep breath that stretched her chest and smiled back. "And I go by Bella, by the way."

Slinging both of their gear over his shoulder, Emmett coughed back another laugh. "Whatever you say, _Doc_. You ready to go meet your new best friends?"

It took fifteen minutes of walking through a series of long halls and covered walkways before Emmett shouldered through a heavy metal door that opened up to their final destination: a wide, open field of white concrete. Off to the right, behind three massive warehouse-like buildings, sat row after neat row of pointed-nose fighters, and directly in front, a runway in matching white concrete stretched to span the length of the base.

"Come on, we're this way. We're hitching a ride on Fred," Emmett said, gesturing to their left and to the small crowd gathered at the open aft door of an enormous gray jet in the center of the tarmac. A sleek, aggressive-looking helicopter was already most of the way inside the cargo hold, and beyond that, deeper in, a pair of headlights spaced wider than a normal street vehicle's reflected back. A second tan-colored Humvee with a turret on its top waited just outside. Waving at the aircraft, the sergeant explained, "C-5. Alice's old buddies are giving us a lift."

"Alice?"

"Yep. That's her helo." Emmett pointed to a small woman with inky black hair in a flight suit. Standing by the ramp, Alice alternated between fisting her hips and pointing in agitation at some unseen problem inside the hold. "Annoying little shit." He snorted and flipped his shades down against the late afternoon sun. "But I swear she's the best driver on the whole goddamned planet. Flies anything, too. Fixed-wing or rotor."

Bella frowned and then flinched when one of the jet's engines roared to life. "You know that I have no idea what you're saying, right?"

"Tink started out Air Force. Fighter pilot." Leaning down, Emmett half-yelled and thumbed toward those neat rows of fighters to their right. "Flew F-16s in Iraq and then Afghanistan." He winked and shot her a mischievous grin that made him seem twenty-three instead of thirty-three. "Then she got smart and decided to upgrade."

"You can transfer?" Bella's nose scrunched. "I didn't know that."

"Not real common. But there was a good reason, she was good enough, and…" He pointed to the tall, lean man with hair the shade of a dirty penny standing off to the side between Agents Dalton and Cameron. From his stance and the squared tautness of his shoulders, Captain Cullen wasn't a happy man. "She had the right backers."

"They're… together?" Bella's brows shot up.

"What?" Stopping in his tracks, Emmett's eyes boggled behind his shades and he made a fake gagging sound. "Fuck, no!"

She waited for the big man to catch back up before saying, "I don't follow, then."

Shifting their gear from one shoulder to the other, Emmett glanced down the runway with a short huff. "Alice was part of a… joint forces operation." Still faced away from both Bella and their captain, who looked like he could spit nails about now, his voice dropped, barely audible over the rumble of the engine tests. "We all were. 'Cept Jazz, that is. He's only been with us for the last two years." Several long seconds passed before he went on. "After that mission… I guess we all sort of gravitated together."

"Wha–"

Cutting her off, not wanting to go _there _at all, Emmett shooed the dark-eyed scientist toward the waiting aircraft. "Let's move. They're almost done, and I can't stand the smell of jet exhaust anyway."

* * *

**June 11**  
**Mid-flight**  
**Somewhere over the Atlantic**

Leaning against the bulkhead, Edward observed the casual interaction between his staff sergeant and their ward. When she tightened her ponytail, a slight tremble made her fingers fumble. The same quiver was there in her voice when she answered Emmett's barrage of questions, too. But it was those eyes of hers that really betrayed her, the captain noted. Constantly moving, they flitted from one Marine to the next, routinely finding their way to Edward only to quickly slide away when she caught him staring back.

Tugging off his cover, Edward raked his hand through his hair in irritation.

Of course, it wasn't like anyone could blame the woman. This shit was far cry from a DARPA lab, and as far as Edward was concerned, she was nothing more than a pretty white lamb cut loose on the savannah. One more person he had to keep alive, he spat. And that was on top of locating an unknown terrorist cell and executing an as-yet planned operation. Just like '07.

Edward's fists balled inside his pockets. Like he'd repeatedly told both the General and those idiots at the CIA, regardless of her _expertise_, Dr. Isabella Swan had no business whatsoever on this plane or in those cammies. No matter how good she looked in them.

"Alright," Emmett started again as he plopped back down in the bright blue seat beside her. Twisting halfway around, he blindly dug through one of the boxes behind them, grabbed two bottles of water, and tossed one of them to their scientist. "Rule number one. You don't _ever_ go outside that Humvee without your plates and your helmet. Got that?" He didn't wait for her to answer and his instructions came out more like a series of barked orders. "You only take that shit off if one of us tells you you can. Clear?"

The woman's face scrunched into a comically sour expression.

"Rule number two. You don't go anywhere unless one of us tells you you can. Not even to piss."

The hard, straight line of Edward's lips broke when Bella huffed. "Yeah, got that one already. No unsupervised pissing."

Emmett shook his head before cracking open his own water bottle and throwing back half the contents in a single chug. "Look, the main thing is just stay behind one of us at all times and do what we tell you to do. If we take a knee, you take a knee. If we drop and crawl, you drop and crawl. If we tell you to stay put, stay fucking put. If we tell you –"

Bella cut him off with a sharp, "I got it. Trust me," and this time Edward had to school his mouth shut to keep from laughing at the hot spark of her irritation. Maybe not a lamb, he corrected. A pissed off kitten was more like it.

Across the deck, leaning against the opposite bulkhead with her arms crossed over her chest, Rosalie glared and mouthed, "This is fucking stupid."

The slight incline of Edward's head was the only indication that he agreed.

"Jazz," Emmett barked, standing and flicking his bottle cap at the corporal dozing across the aisle. "Go over the gear with her, will ya? I need to talk to the Captain." Instantly alert, the younger man nodded once before hopping over to take Emmett's seat.

"Okay, Doc," Jasper said, not wasting any time, as he quickly burrowed through her pack to locate an item Edward hoped none of them would need to wear. "Gas mask. You ever wore one?"

"It's Bella."

"What?"

"Never mind," Bella muttered on an exhale. "Yeah, I know what a gas mask is."

"_Right_…" The corporal's lips pursed as he studied the scientist. "I'd guess so, considering." A little hesitant – perhaps a touch disbelieving – he asked, "So you know how to test the seal and everything?" When she confirmed, ever efficient, Jasper moved on and picked up another item. "Night vision. These'll mount up on your helmet. This model is brand spanking new, too. Flip this switch and it'll show thermal." He grabbed her helmet and began fastening the black goggles to the bracket on the front. "Pretty bad ass, huh? All you have to do is…"

In her periphery, Bella tracked the massive staff sergeant, Emmett – appropriately called _Bear_ by his team – as he looked over to Captain Cullen and silently motioned toward the rear of the cabin. The commander lifted a single brow, but then in response to something she didn't see, without saying a word, he turned and followed.

Hard, lean, and with a set of wide, straight shoulders that tapered to a trim waist, Captain Edward Cullen possessed a presence and bearing that few could match, she realized. Weaponless and at ease, it wasn't arrogance he wore when he surveyed the room, but a special kind of quiet self-assurance that could only come from a man who knew both precisely where his limits lay and that those limits were beyond those of anyone else around. Even in the shadows and physically dwarfed by the man beside him – despite his own six-foot-two frame – it was the stern-faced captain that drew everyone's eyes and ears.

The bigger man threw a furtive glance toward Bella and Jasper before saying something that she couldn't hear but that made the captain's jaw tick. His fists moved to his hips, his eyes darted to hers, and his voice, unmistakable in its incredulity, carried across the cabin. "She wants _what_?"

"She's got a point, sir," the sergeant countered, scratching his chin.

"Christ, Emmett! Are you going to be the one to babysit…"

Bella tore herself away from the arguing men, careful to avoid the glaring gunnery sergeant across the way, just in time to see the light brown balaclava Jasper held up in front of her face. "For when it's dusty and shit. And it's NOMEX, too." Tossing the garment aside, he rummaged through another one of the numerous pouches. "Alright. See this? This is important. Radio headset. Even though you will never_, __ever_…" He paused and tapped his foot until he had Bella's full attention. "Be on your own, you'll still need to know what's going on and be able to talk to us." Pointing at a switch and a swivel, he explained, "It's pretty easy to use and as long as Em and Tink aren't bickering back and forth it's not so bad to get used to."

Taking the headset the Marine offered, Bella fiddled with the adjustable mic arm. "I really appreciate this."

The corporal's forehead creased. "Huh?"

"I appreciate you not being a dick about them forcing me on you."

Rosalie coughed and muttered a low, "_Unbelievable_," but the rest of the cabin instantly went silent.

A faint dusting of pink and its accompanying heat climbed the younger man's neck. "Right, well, I mean, it's not like I _like_ it, so don't think that." Ducking his head, Jasper continued sorting through the pack, rearranging Emmett's haphazard attempt at organization. "But whatever, ya know? Not my call. Plus, it's too late now anyway, so might as well do what we can so no one gets killed because of you."

"Jazz!" Edward snapped from behind them. "Enough!"

"_Shit_," Jasper muttered, wide-eyed at the unexpected reprimand. He tossed the scientist an apologetic smile. "Sorry, ma'am. No offense or anything."

"Yeah, I know. I get that a lo–"

Before Bella could finish, the cockpit door banged open. Still in her flight suit, headphones in, and with her arms pumping and hips swinging, First Lieutenant Alice Brandon waltzed into the cabin. Literally danced inside. Oblivious to the tension, half-singing and half-rapping, she belted out a loud, off-key, "Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism… But we still got terrorists here livin' in the USA… The big CIA… The Bloods and the Crips and the KKK…"

Bella's palm clapped over her mouth, and raucous laughter erupted behind her. Bolting up, Jasper grinned and took Alice's outstretched hand, spinning her around in the center aisle as she kept on, "People killin', people dyin'. Children hurt and you hear them cryin'. Can you practice what you preach? And would you turn the other cheek…"

"Better than last time, I guess," Emmett snickered as he walked over to stand by the tall blonde. "Don't you remember? She was on Shaggy for three weeks! I didn't think I'd ever get that _Summertime_ shit out of my head." He tugged on Rosalie's ponytail, earning him half-assed glower. "At least Fergie's hot." And that got him a kick to the shin. "Damn, you're violent, woman!"

"Shut up and be nice." Rosalie punched him in the shoulder, not moving him at all, and then _finally_ flashed a row of straight white teeth. "Didn't you watch _Hook_? Fairies can be sensitive little bitches…"

With a put-on glare, Alice yanked out her headphones. "_Pfft!_ You know what they say, right? Float like a fairy…" Twirling under Jasper's outstretched arm, she smirked and winked at Bella. "But sting like a motherfucking hellfire missile!"

"Kill me now," Emmett groaned, staggering backward into the bulkhead and slapping his forehead. "You did _not_ just butcher the Great Mohammad Ali." He peered over to the approaching captain. "Do something with her!"

"Think I haven't tried?"

"What-_ever_," Alice chimed, rolling her eyes as she spun around and dropped to the seat beside Bella, kicking up her boots on the armrest. "You're Bella. I'm Alice. Ignore them." She grinned. "And sorry you had to deal with… _him_." Alice playfully tilted her head in Emmett's direction, netting an indignant, "_I heard that!_" from the sergeant before she then turned more serious and leveled a flat stare at the rest of the team, _including_ her commanding officer. "I hope they're not being assholes. They can be sometimes, you know. Seriously, like fucking Neanderthals. If they are, just blame it on all the time away from civilization."

"Nah, they're fine," Bella replied with a wave at the open pack beside her. "We were just going over some… _stuff_ I need to know."

"Speaking of," Jasper cut in, ignoring Alice's annoyed huff. "There's a couple more things we need to cover." When he pulled out three slender black plastic cases, each a hand's length in size, all amusement _and_ movement in the cabin ceased.

"ATNAA kits," Edward interrupted, gazing down at the dark-haired woman. Tan, sinewy cords of muscle, bare from having rolled up his sleeves, flexed along his forearms. "But I'm sure you know a lot more about these than we do. Correct?"

"I do," Bella answered, barely heard, as she reached into a canvas bag she'd brought on board – a different one from the pack Emmett had prepared. Inside a sealed container that she'd carefully concealed deep inside the bag were another two dozen kits, roughly the same size and shape as the standard issued black ones, only these were a dark burgundy and instead of carrying the ATNAA label, they were stamped in large, white block print, _XR-5-Ab_.

Clearing her throat, Bella picked up one of the burgundy cases. "This is… " She stopped, laid it in her lap, and then grabbed one of the pen-size injectors from a standard black kit and held it up. "So you know that these injectors contain both atropine and pralidoxime chloride."

"Good for VX and sarin." Rosalie gave her a curt nod.

"Right," Bella answered and then glanced up at the captain. "But like I said in the General's office… this is…" She chucked the injector into the box behind her. "_Nothing_ against XR-5. Useless. There's not enough atropine to counter it," she explained to the team. "The pralidoxime chloride is too weak. And neither can move through your bloodstream fast enough."

"Wait a minute, Doc," Jasper blurted. "Are you saying…"

Alice shushed him.

"Believe me." The scientist's teeth worried her cheek before she continued, slowly moving her head side to side. "I _know_ it doesn't. I was there when it was tested. I know what happens. Riley and I… that's what we did. I know XR-5 because it's _mine_. It's what I _do_."

"Then what do you suggest, Dr. Swan?" Edward asked, low and even, like always the picture of collected self-assurance.

"This." Bella shoved one of the burgundy cases into the captain's hand. "It's… atropine and pralidoxime, but in much higher doses and the latter's been modified. It'll do everything that the ATNAA will do. But this one's also got an additional drug – a new one – and a better delivery medium."

Flipping the kit over, he watched her mouth purse and saw the hint of wet shine when she looked away. "Why?" This time Edward's voice came out as soft as spun silk.

"When we saw… what kind of _damage_ XR-5 could do… how completely and irreversibly devastating it could be… how it could wipe out thousands of people in mere minutes…" Her shoulders fell, folding inward. A second passed, and then another, and then abruptly the woman's lips mashed into a tight line and her shoulders squared straight again. "Riley and I had some very long conversations. Based on other existing antidotes and what we knew about XR-5, we came up with a sketch of something that we thought might work as an emergency corrective measure. That's that third drug… I played around with it at night and on weekends. When Riley went missing… I did some tweaking and finally got it into liquid form."

"You didn't say any of this in the General's office."

"No, I didn't. On purpose, which might mean my job if it gets out." Bella made another face and chewed her thumbnail. "See, it hasn't been approved… or really tested, other than in simulations and on lab rats. They'd have never let me prep it for use. But it was the only – "

Rosalie asked, "But does it work?"

Sighing, Bella fingered the white stamped lettering. "Theoretically? Yes, it should. The simulations showed very high efficacy. In practice, though? I'd give it… maybe thirty to forty percent odds. Maybe less, maybe more." Risking a glance up, she went on, "It's the best – the _only_ – chance you've got against XR-5…There's nothing else out there right now. But you've _got_ to inject it _immediately_ upon exposure. No more than… four or five seconds, at most. A couple of heartbeats to pump it around is all you've got before it just won't matter."

Edward studied the woman for a long, measured moment, and then slowly, his gaze swung around the cabin, pausing at each member of his team. "No one goes anywhere without three of these. Front pocket, no excuses. Got it?"

* * *

**June 11  
30° 21' 1.5660"  
34° 50' 48.7428"  
Negev Desert, Israel**

"You're with me, Dr. Swan," Edward ordered as they climbed out of the C-5 into hot, dry desert air. Reflected off the flat, pale beige floor of the valley, the sun was almost blinding, even with sunglasses, and the miserable heat blasted down straight through the fabric of their cammies. "Blondie, you and Em take the Humvees and get 'em loaded. Jazz, makes sure Tinkerbell doesn't kill any airmen getting that helo out. Meet back at nineteen hundred."

A quick succession of, "Yes, sirs," followed.

Scrambling to keep up with the captain's longer stride, Bella attempted to look around to gauge their location. Somewhere in the Middle East, she guessed. With very little in the way of vegetation – and what was there was short, sparse, and dry – all around the airfield were short, craggy mountains and rocks. Other than the brown-beige asphalt of the runway, there wasn't a sign of pavement anywhere, either. Instead, just dusty dirt roads that seemed to lead straight into the sides of the rounded hills of the same color that sat at the base of the mountains.

"Where _are_ we?" she asked.

Edward's lips turned up as he pointed to the right where, after a second of squinting, Bella could finally make out what looked like a dirt-colored tent. The longer she looked, the clearer the image became, and she realized that it wasn't just one tent in the middle of the desert, but several, all situated between the rounded hills. People in olive green fatigues moved beneath the canopies. "Those aren't really hills, are they?"

"No, they're hangars."

"Holy shit."

As they walked toward one of the larger set-ups, Edward watched the woman in his periphery, trying not to laugh at the way she gaped when a massive door into one of her 'hills' rolled up to reveal the nose of a green, brown, and tan fighter hiding inside.

"_Shalom_, my friend!" Jogging out from beneath a nearby tent, a familiar tall, dark-haired, olive-skinned man laughed and greeted, "_Harbe zman lo hitra'enu__!_"

A quick grin flashed across Edward's face as he motioned to the C-5 behind them and then extended his hand. "_Rav Seren, m__ah shlomecha?_"

"Eh, _h__akol beseder b'eli haseder_." Major El'azar Dayan – scout, sniper, commander of one of the elite teams within Sayeret Matkal, and Edward's Israeli counterpart for all intents and purposes – just shrugged like usual. "Same old, you know how it is. They play politics while I'm here sweating my balls off in the desert…" Glancing at the pale woman standing beside the captain, he chuckled. "So what brings the mighty Ghost back to my side of harm's way? You just left, no?"

Edward's eyes danced. "Eh, _lo kelom_. You know how it is."

"Bullshit," the man barked, clapping Edward on the shoulder and shaking his head. "You have a beautiful woman with you. It can't be nothing much to bring one like her here."

Rolling his eyes, Edward rattled off a smart-ass answer in Hebrew, and then the two men launched into a fast-paced exchange, punctuated by equally fast hand gestures and shifting expressions. A few minutes in, somewhere mid-conversation, Edward reached into his pocket and produced a small sheet of paper. On it was an insignia of sorts. All black, and in the center, there was a blood red scorpion, reared up and poised to strike its dagger tail. Along the bottom, following the curved arc of the design, were small red symbols that Bella couldn't identify.

El'azar's expression hardened as he examined the emblem. Swapping back to English, he muttered, "Only whispers about this one. Nothing official. Nothing good."

"Who picked it up?" Edward asked.

The major chuffed. "Two weeks ago, a _Kidon_ unit said they saw something similar during a… _training exercise_."

"Where?"

"Northern Iran," he said, spitting. "Camp was hidden in the Kopet-Dag. That symbol – or one like it – was stamped on a heavy-duty weapons cache. No personnel to verify, though… well, none surviving, at least."

It wasn't surprising that the Israeli knew more than the CIA had been able to tell him. That was always the case around these parts. "Figures," Edward grumbled. "Keep your eyes open, will ya? Let me know if you hear anything else. We'll do the same."

"Always…" the major replied, inclining his head before moving his gaze to Bella. He grinned. "Now, Captain, are you going to introduce me or must I be rude and do it myself?"

Turning slightly, Edward saw the scientist start. Beneath her boonie, a faint sheen of sweat made her skin look like satin, and her lips were red and full from where her teeth had been clamped down during their exchange. His fingers flexed. "Right… Dr. Swan, this is Major El'azar Dayan." He paused. "Major, Dr. Isabe–"

"Bella," she interrupted, offering her hand to the Israeli soldier.

Roaming her face, El'azar clasped Bella's hand, holding on a second too long. "Very appropriate."

Bella blushed the color of the major's beret, nodded, and then mumbled a quick, quiet, "_Naim me'od._"

Beside her, the captain went ramrod stiff, and both men's brows rose. El'azar's eyes darted to Edward's. "_Mah zeh?_"

Blowing a puff of air, Bella waved a hand and said, "I'm not a spy or anything nefarious like that, so don't even ask. When I was growing up, my mother changed religions like most women change purses…" She grimaced, crinkling her nose. "There was a Jewish phase when I was in high school and that meant Hebrew classes for me." Brushing a damp strand of hair off her neck and back up under her cover, Bella sighed, "I was just lucky that I'd already left for college by the time she moved east to Hinduism."

Without warning, the major's already grinning face split wide and he let out a loud roar of a laugh. "I see we've been outmaneuvered, _Ru'ach refaim_!" he cried, slapping Edward's shoulder again, as Edward just shook his head. When he finally calmed, El'azar shot her a predatory smile, and his dark eyes glittered when he purred, "So what other surprises do you have up your camouflaged sleeve, beautiful one? Tell me you wield a knife, and I'm yours forever."

"Alright," Edward cut in. "That's enough of that." The captain's tone was flat – all business and no nonsense – but the tightness of his jaw said something else. To El'azar, he asked, "Mind if we borrow your range?"

"But of course," El'azar said, still chuckling, and then he winked at Bella. "My house is yours."

Ten minutes later, Bella stood, staring across a long, flat stretch of dirt at a life-sized, person-shaped piece of black cardboard with white curving lines circling the most vulnerable parts. She wiped the back of her neck. Her hand coming away soaked, she then swiped her palm across her leg. "I'm not so –"

From beside her, there was a quick brush of stiff fabric, a sudden _snap_, and then the telltale metallic _click-clack_ of a chambered round. She swallowed and slowly turned just as the captain asked, "You ready?"

Looking down at the empty holster strapped to the man's left thigh and then to the other one on his opposite leg, _not empty_, Bella swallowed again. "I –"

"Watch," he replied as he gripped a sand-colored semi-automatic in his right hand, forefinger straight against the slide, and supported it with his left in demonstration. "Feet shoulder width. Lean forward a little. Relax." He clicked the safety off. "Line it up and steadily pull the trigger to fire."

The sudden ear-splitting bang that echoed through the valley made Bella jump and take a step back. Without pausing, he fired off two more rounds in quick succession, each loud crack making her blink in automatic response. When it was quiet again, she looked down range to the target. Three neat holes, almost right on top of each other, sat dead center where the heart would be.

"Geez, you're really… good," she mumbled.

"I'm alright," he said, smiling a little because fact of the matter was that Captain Edward Cullen was the best shot in the entire battalion, with only Rosalie coming anywhere close to his scores. "Try it. Emmett said you wanted to carry a sidearm… so here, let's see if you can handle one."

Bella gingerly accepted the proffered pistol, eyeing it like it would bite.

"Go ahead," he urged quietly, noting the slight tremble when she wiped her palm on her pants again. He walked behind her and placed his hands on the tops of her shoulders, repositioning her ever so slightly. "Just relax."

Mimicking the grip the captain had showed her, Bella looked down the barrel and past the little square bead at the end. She took a long, slow breath, and then another, and finally, slowly pulled the trigger. The boom was even louder up close, and the recoil – unexpectedly strong – sent her elbows flying and her body backward into Edward's. Her back hit his chest with a surprised, "Damn_–unf!_–it!"

"Nice," Edward chuckled next to her ear as he righted the slender scientist. Resting his hand against her lower back as he studied the target, he found a small hole right through the forehead – unintended, no doubt. "Can you do that again? Aim for the chest, though. It's a bigger target."

Wiping her face with the back of her arm, Bella moved back into a ready stance and nodded. Following the same instructions as before, she lined up the target behind the bead and then, this time prepared for the recoil, fired off three rounds. And then another three. And then one last one.

Edward's hand and jaw both dropped and he stared at the woman still holding his sidearm. She grinned up at him like she'd just won the lottery. Three in the chest, a fairly tight coupling, and three in the head, spread out but again decent and more than competent for a civilian. And then that last one right in the crotch.

As far as Edward was concerned, Dr. Isabella Swan just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

"Witch!" El'azar bellowed from behind them, laughing his ass off. "Marry me, beautiful!"

"Where did you learn to shoot?" Edward asked, disbelieving and ignoring the laughing Israeli.

Bella's expression turned sheepish. "My dad… He was in the Army – a Ranger. And then he was a cop in my hometown once he retired. He said everyone needed to know how. But I haven't shot anything since high school, though. I guess it's like… I don't know… riding a bike."

"I guess so."

She looked down at her boots and toed the loose dirt. "I don't think I could do that to a real person, though."

"Maybe, maybe not." Shielding his eyes from the sun, Edward watched a pair of camouflaged fighters streak across the bright blue sky. "If it comes down to it, you'd be surprised at what you can and cannot do."

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes: **If you use Google Maps (in satellite view) or Google Earth, if you look up those coordinates given in the last segment and zoom really far in… you'll find something rather _interesting_. I stumbled upon it in my research.

* * *

**Hebrew **(transliterated)**:**

_Shalom_ – Peace, Hello, Goodbye

_Harbe zman lo hitra'enu_ – Long time, no see

_Rav Seren_ – Major (military)

_Mah shlomecha?_ – How are you?

_Hakol beseder b'eli haseder_ – Everything is in order within the chaos (a common phrase)

_Lo kelom_ – Nothing much

_Mah zeh_ – What's this?

_Naim me'od_ – It's a pleasure

_Ru'ach refaim_ – _ru'ach_ means spirit as associated with the soul. _Refaim_ refers to the 'fallen ones'. Combined they kind of mean 'ghost'.

* * *

**Glossary **(lots of jargon in this chapter)**:**

_AH-1Z_** – **aka Viper, is the USMC's newest attack helicopter, capable of firing rockets, hellfire, and sidewinder missiles. It also has a 20mm chin-mounted turret gun. **Note:** this is one of those points where I'm taking some creative liberties. In reality, the AH-1Z is designed for two-man operation: a pilot and a gunner. Because Alice is such a great multi-tasker, I'm letting her handle both jobs. :)

_AT –_ or Appalachian Trail, is a 2000+ mile marked hiking trail through the Appalachian Mountains that runs from Maine to Georgia.

_ATNAA_ – or Antidote Treatment Nerve Agent Auto-Injector, contains both atropine and pralidoxime chloride in one injector. It is effective against Tabun (GA), Sarin (GB), Soman (GD) and VX nerve agents.

_Balaclava_ – is basically a ski mask.

_Black Ops_ – or Black Operations, are missions and activities involving direct action (i.e. offensive engagements), as opposed to "Green Ops", in which the activities are more geared toward assessment and reconnaissance.

_Boonie_ – or boonie cover (hat), is a broad-brimmed soft cover.

_Cammies_ – or camouflage utility uniform, are the "work" uniform of the Marines, consisting of a long-sleeved, pocketed, and reinforced blouse, cargo style trousers worn tucked into boots, an olive t-shirt worn underneath the blouse, a webbed rigger's belt, and tan rough-cut boots. Insignia can be pinned on the collar, but often is not worn in combat. During _black ops_ [see above in Glossary] activities, Force Recon Marines often wear NOMEX (a type of fire resistant fabric) flight suits instead of the usual utility uniform.

_F-16_ – or General Dynamics (later Lockheed, then Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon, is a fighter aircraft capable of both air-to-air combat and ground attack. The USAF (Air Force) currently operates around 1000 of these.

_Fred/_ F.R.E.D. – stands for Fucking Ridiculous Economic Disaster and is a nickname given to the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, a rather large heavy airlifter operated by the USAF. It's larger than the Marine Corps' usual C-130 airlifter, with a cargo hold capable of transporting the load in the chapter above: an AH-1Z Viper helo with minimal dismantling _and_ two Humvees. There's actually a cool photo and write up out where a combo USMC/USAF team at Travis AFB was able to fit a UH-1Y Venom (utility helo) _and_ an AH-1Z both inside a C-5. You can Google it.

_Hellfire missile_ – is an air-to-surface weapon, designed to carry a roughly 20lb warhead of varying type (incendiary, thermobaric, etc.). It's a precision weapon used to target armored entities, such as tanks, bunkers, armored vehicles, etc.

_Humvee_ – or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), is a common military vehicle for transporting small teams of Marines overland. They're four-wheel-drive, roughly 7-ft wide, often armored, and are usually set up to carry 4 people: driver, gunner, commander, and radio. Numerous versions exist and they come equipped for a variety of situations and scenarios. For example, there's a version out there that has hellfire missle launch capability. Cool, eh?

_IFAK_ – Individual First Aid Kit

_Interservice Transfer_ – commissioned officer transfers between different branches of the armed services is allowed, although it's not terribly common. The process is governed by DOD 1300.04 and MCO 1001.45H. From what I understand, depending on the situation and individual, an incoming officer to the Corps may be required to attend The Basic School (training school for officers), additional training depending on the future function, and/or stay at grade longer than s/he would have otherwise.

_Kidon_ – a department within the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) that handles assassinations.

_Leatherman_ – is a company that makes multi-purpose tools, but the name has also been appropriated as a general term for any multi-purpose knife/pliers/screwdriver/etc. combination tool. Kind of like how people call any tissue a Kleenex.

_MARPAT_ – or MARine PATtern, is the current standard Marine digitized camouflage pattern, coming in both "Woodland" and "Desert" varieties.

_Night Vision Goggles_ – or binoculars, or rifle scopes, etc., are nifty little devices that utilize a variety of physics and optics principles to intensify light and enhance vision in low to very low light. The green cast that you most often see is due to the green phosphor screen, which is selected based on human eye sensitivity. **Note:** While there are patents out there, a few larger optical instruments, and maybe even a few prototype binocular sets, I'm not aware of any existing, readily switchable night vision to thermal imaging personal equipment. This is just me making up more fun stuff.

_Sayeret Matkal – _an elite Special Forces unit within the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). They specialize in deep reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, and hostage rescue.

_Tactical Vest_ – to be honest, it's a little confusing trying to figure out which exact vest specific units are using right _now. _It varies from function to function, and they seem to change out/update models every few years. The current standard USMC ballistics vest is the recently adopted Improved Modular Tactical Vest (IMTV). Special Forces, including Force Recon, often use a different vest, however, especially for black ops activities. At least until recently, they used the CIRAS (Combat Integrated Releasable Armor System) vest, which is more compact and maneuverable than the IMTV.

But either way, pretty much any ballistics vest used by the Corps will cover the trunk of the body, or at least the upper portion. Its purpose is to protect the wearer against small weapons rounds and shrapnel using a combination of layered Kevlar fabric construction and ceramic Small Arms Protective Inserts (SAPI), which are inserted into special pouches built into the vest. Handy-dandy pouches for things like grenades, magazines (the bullet type, not _Cosmo_), etc. can be attached.


	4. Chapter 4

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale **are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**June 12  
30° 21' 1.5660"  
34° 50' 48.7428"  
Negev Desert, Israel**

It was well before dawn when Bella emerged from one of the large tent-like barracks. Overhead, absent any clouds, humidity, or even a hint of human light pollution, the sky was a velvety pitch-black, lit only by the low-hung moon and a shotgun spray of glittering stars. Even up close, the hill-like hangars nearby and the jagged mountains beyond were little more than dark silhouettes.

It was quiet, too. In fact, the only sign that she wasn't completely alone was a pair of dim lights moving back and forth maybe a hundred or so yards away, somewhere in the middle of what she guessed was the dirt-colored tarmac.

"Welcome to zero dark thirty, Dr. Swan."

Bella jolted, and before she could stop herself, a wheezy, half-screamed, "_Christ!_" spilled out as her palm clapped to her chest, banging against one of the stiff SAPI plates. Momentum and shock carried her backward into what felt like a solid brick wall. A lightning quick hand instantly appeared, grabbed her by the back of her tactical vest, and kept her from tumbling further. She'd have screamed again, but at the soft, even-pitched, "Easy now," right beside her ear and the faintest hint of familiar aftershave, Bella instead blew out a loud, shaky breath of air. "You scared the crap out of me! Do you make a habit of sneaking up on people like that?"

Edward's lips twitched. "You could say that."

With a low chuckle, he glanced out across the darkened airfield before silently offering the wide-eyed scientist – who was now muttering under her breath and slinging a pair of smarting fingers – one of the two steaming cups he'd appropriated before walking over to wake her up. It took her a second to notice it was there hovering in the air between them, and then another to gingerly accept it.

Bella scrunched her nose and squinted up at the shadow beside her. She _thought_ she caught a slight, amused upturn of his lips. "What is it?"

One brow shot up. "Coffee."

"Oh…" she mumbled, risking a sip only to retreat the second the almost-boiling liquid touched her tongue. What the captain called _coffee_ was viscous, bitter, and strong enough to peel paint, so she settled for just warming her hands. At a good forty degrees cooler than the inferno they'd arrived to yesterday afternoon, a little heat against the early morning desert air was a welcome comfort. "You didn't have to, but thanks."

Shifting his focus from the tarmac, where the two sergeants were finishing up their final checks, back to Bella, Edward shrugged and gulped the last few ounces of his own cup. Grimacing, he flicked the empty container into one of the black metal barrels outside the tent. "Not much to thank me for. El'azar makes the shittiest coffee in all of Israel… Probably the world."

Caught off guard by the commander's unexpected humor – _today_ of all days – Bella cracked a smile. Right about the time she opened her mouth to comment, a loud guffaw came from behind them. "I heard that, _Seren!_"

"_Az mah, Rav Seren? Ze nachon_," Edward yelled over his shoulder. "You _do_ make the shittiest coffee." With a quick grin at the approaching major, he spat for emphasis. "Do you even drink it yourself or do you just use it to torture us unfortunate souls?"

El'azar grumbled something back in Hebrew, too fast and too low for Bella to follow, but whatever it was made the captain choke on a laugh. The Israeli barked something else – something not at all fit for mixed company if Bella translated it correctly – before doing a complete one-eighty. He turned to Bella with a low, sultry purr, "And a very good morning to you, beautiful, most deadly one."

Now grateful for the darkness since her cheeks instantly flamed at his flirtation, Bella quickly deflected, waving a haphazard hand. "Morning? Is that what you call this?"

Edward's shoulders shook at the woman's poorly disguised evasive action.

"But of course it is…"

Without thinking, Bella slugged back a shot of her coffee. As soon as the bitter liquid hit the back of her throat, her whole face screwed up, blanching at the aftertaste. "God, this really does taste like ass," she muttered.

"Ah, _Neshama, A__ni shelach_…" El'azar sighed and dramatically pressed his palms to his chest. When Bella groaned and covered her eyes, he winked over to the now scowling captain. "You shall have Starbucks upon your return, I swear it."

Edward mouthed a silent, "_Ad kan_," and sliced the air. Of course, that just made the Israeli laugh that much harder. When the Marine leveled him a flat, uncompromising stare – one that would have made any other man squirm – El'azar threw up his hands in mock surrender. "Alright, alright," he chuckled. "Fine, I get it. She's _yours _then."

"_Hishtagata?"_

"_Batu'ach?"_ El'azar smirked, cocking a brow. "Could have fooled me…"

Edward's jaw ticked and his shoulders squared. "Don't you have something to do?"

"Of course, I do," he scoffed. "When do I not? You know how it is… Never any rest for the weary."

In the distance, there was a sudden high-pitched whine of a helicopter winding up, and El'azar abruptly turned as serious as death itself as he instinctively scanned the horizon. Beyond the two sergeants and their awaiting Humvees, he could just make out the aggressive outline of the American lieutenant's helo, loaded up with enough firepower to level a small mountain.

"How long do you anticipate?"

"Not sure," Edward answered, like the major, now all business, previous joking laid aside. "We have to get back to that extraction site first." He scratched his chin. "That's close to a day overland, maybe longer if we have to take one of back routes, which we'll probably have to do since we lit up one of their checkpoints on the way out. From there?" He shrugged and stole a glance to the dark-haired scientist, who was now nervously twisting her hands around her half-empty cup. "Who knows. It all depends on who and what we find."

The Israeli nodded, his face pinched into a hard expression Edward knew well. "We're not permitted to accompany you at this time, but we will be here training for the next month. You know how to reach us, yes?"

"I do."

"You run into hell, Captain, you call. We will come." And then in typical fatalistic fashion, the major winked and added, "Nothing's better for training than live ammo anyway." Before Edward could respond, reaching into his pocket, El'azar drew out a tiny, black device, which he then wordlessly pressed inside their scientist's palm. "Here, beautiful, you will take this."

When the captain didn't object or even comment, Bella frowned down at the unknown item and turned it over in her hand. It was circular and small, maybe the size of a silver dollar, and it had what felt like a metal clip on the back. "What's–"

Clearing his throat, El'azar quietly explained, "If at any time you find yourself alone… if for… _whatever reason…_ you are separated from Edward or his team, you will activate this. Flip the hinged cap and depress the button."

"What does it do?" Her heart pounded a jagged rhythm.

"The moment it's activated, I will know it. We're closer than your Americans. We will come for you, no matter where you are. We will not let you die there alone at the hands of terrorist dogs."

The temperature plummeted at the harsh, matter-of-fact declaration, and the air sucked out of Bella's lungs. "What if I'm already dead?" she whispered, looking at the captain on instinct. His expression was unreadable, flat and emotionless.

The major spat. "Then, _Yirtzah HaShem_, we will avenge you just like we would our own."

Bella's throat bobbed as her fist closed around the device.

"Alright," Edward interjected as, without conscious direction, the tips of his fingers found the gentle slope of the scientist's hip, the curve hidden beneath the stiff tactical vest, but still very much there. "Don't need to scare her that much."

"Of course not. I'm certain there will be no need for it anyway." El'azar offered them both a small smile. "And… work calls, so I must leave you. Go… save the world."

Bella shook her head at both the sentiment and the craziness of the entire situation, carefully tucked the beacon into the front pocket of her camouflage blouse, and extended a shaky hand. "_Todah veShalom, El'azar Dayan._"

With a pointed, goading glance at Edward, the major sighed and made a show of kissing the back of Bella's hand. Twice. "Are you certain I can't have her, O Mighty Ghost?"

The captain rolled his eyes and snorted. "Let's go, Dr. Swan." The pressure of his fingertips against her hip increased slightly, but neither missed it. Nor acknowledged it.

"_Kacha HaChayim…_" As El'azar turned and began to walk away, almost instantly disappearing into the shadows, he paused, glanced over his shoulder, and called out. "Ah, Captain, I almost forgot. You heard your good buddy's hanging out in Damascus, yes?"

Edward stiffened. "Who are you talking about?"

"Your favorite little pack of Deltas."

"_Fuck_," Edward muttered, lifting his face to the velvet sky. "Fine. Thanks for the warning."

El'azar laughed and turned back toward the line of dirt-colored canopies, where the lights inside had begun slowly flickering to life. "Anytime, my friend. Anytime."

"Who was he talking about?"

Glancing down at the scientist, Edward scowled. "No one important."

Bella's brows climbed. "If you say so…"

Not taking _that_ bait, Edward instead eyed the poor fit of her gear and said, "Here, turn around. I need to fix your holster before you wind up hurting yourself." When she spun without comment, he squatted, unclipped a couple of the buckles, cinched the webbed straps such that his sidearm now sat neatly against her slender thigh, and clipped it all back together. Then tsking under his breath, without bothering to ask, he adjusted the straps on her vest with the quick efficiency of a man who lived and breathed his armor. "That work better?"

"Yeah, I think so." Twisting at the waist, she was surprised that it actually did. "Thanks."

Edward clicked on a small flashlight and aimed the pale white LED beam toward the Humvees in the distance in indication before illuminating the ground at her feet. "Come on then, it's time to go. Need to be over the border before daylight."

As the two made their way across the flat dirt floor of the valley and then across the tarmac, Bella peered up at the captain, noting the same collected alertness and bearing she'd observed on the plane. Handsome wasn't the right word for him, she thought. He was too hard for that, too serious. Hot was for pretty men in glossy calendars, not a seasoned Marine heading off to work. And sexy… maybe. But really, none of the normal descriptors fit the man beside her, she decided. The best Bella could come up with that was Captain Cullen was… _compelling_. More so than any other man she'd ever met.

"How long have you been awake anyway?"

"A couple of hours." One corner of his mouth pulled up, softening the hard, stoic lines of his face. "Honestly didn't expect you to be up when I came over," he added.

"I couldn't sleep." Her answer came quick, delivered in that same hushed whisper she'd used when she'd asked El'azar, "_What if I'm already dead?_" For a long moment, neither spoke. When they hit asphalt, Bella shoved her hands in her pockets and quietly asked, "Are you worried, Captain?"

It took him a second to respond and when he did, she wasn't entirely sure she'd heard him right. "I'm always worried."

Bella chewed the inside of her cheek. "That doesn't really make me feel better, you know."

Stealing a quick glance, he smiled, but the upturn of his lips wasn't a happy one. Even in the dark, she could see that. "Sorry, but it's the truth." As if that were all the explanation needed, he gestured toward the waiting vehicles. "The second I don't worry about every single member on that team is the second I need to be removed from commanding it."

She hesitated. "Okay, that makes me feel a _little_ better."

Edward stopped in his tracks, grabbing the woman by the elbow and spinning her around to face him. "Look, just do exactly what Emmett told you do on the ride over." He paused, looked down to where his hand rested, and then dropped it like a hot coal. "Just stay behind me… or any of the others… at all times, no matter what, and you'll be okay. You're not going to have to use that locator. That's just a precaution."

Something that he'd just said didn't sit quite right, but rather than go down that rabbit hole, Bella shook her head. "It's not me… that's not what I'm worried about…"

"Then what is it?"

"What if those people… that group of _whatever_ they are… what if they decide to actually _use_ XR-5 instead of just selling it?" She flinched, bit down too hard, and when she swallowed, she tasted blood. When she looked down the tarmac to the waiting vehicles, all the thoughts she'd been trying to suppress tumbled out. "War. Genocide. God only knows what they could do with it… Those… what if they're planning to use… _my_ weapon to kill everyone I love? What if we can't find them? What if Riley…"

"Stop."

She blinked at the quiet command, frozen mid-word.

Softer, yet at the same time firm enough that the woman's back involuntarily straightened, Edward said, "Doctor, you can't worry about shit like that right now. There's no use in it." He ducked down low enough that she had no choice but to look him in the eye. "You just worry about keeping your head down. Clear?" He waited for her to nod before going on. "When we find that cell and your formula, then you can worry about that other shit, but not a second before."

"Okay…" she mumbled. "I understand." Blowing out a heavy breath, Bella closed her eyes, willing her heartbeat to slow. "Have you ever done anything like this before? This kind of operation?"

Abruptly, he looked away. "No, not _just_ like this…" His fingers stole to his side, rubbing away a phantom ache. "But I've stared down into the abyss a time or two… I know what lives at the bottom."

* * *

**June 12  
En Route  
Somewhere in the Middle East**

"Jazz, hold up ahead."

Their Humvee slowed to a crawl, its tires popping over the loose gravel of the dried up riverbed, and inched its way toward a mile-high sheer rock face that signaled yet another sharp bend in the narrow canyon. The vehicle behind them followed suit, and when Bella glanced back, she saw the tall, blonde gunnery sergeant climb through the ringmount to man the M2.

Grabbing the radio, Edward looked up through the dusty windshield. "Tink? Where you at?"

Static pulsed through the line. "Ten klicks to your south. On my way back up to you."

He scanned the sliver of bright blue sky visible between the high rock walls before signaling the corporal. Without hesitating, Jasper grabbed his rifle – a customized M110 to match the marksmanship badge he rarely displayed – and slipped out of the vehicle, targeting the nearby wall for cover.

"What you see?" the captain barked as he followed the corporal's movements, his hand positioned on the door handle to exit at a moment's notice.

This was probably the twelfth time in so many hours that they'd followed this same protocol, yet each time they stopped, Bella's heart hammered and she automatically gripped the seat, not letting go until the younger man was back inside the relative safety of the Humvee.

The radio blared static again before Alice's soprano cut through. "Captain, you're gonna need to move out of that canyon and get up on the high road."

"_Shit_," Edward muttered as he punched the buttons on the instrument panel in front of him. The gray LED screen lit up, displaying a beige-on-brown topographical map with an embedded road system. "How far?"

"Hang a right in three at the BFR. Looks like a fuckin' goat trail from where I sit and it cuts back hard, but it'll get you to the top quick."

Outside the Humvee, low and tight against the wall and with his rifle poised and ready, Jasper slinked toward the corner. Against the mottled rock and hidden by the low brown shrubs, he was almost impossible to see. Once at the end, he dropped to a knee, quickly peeked around the edge, and then after a second, slowly crept around and disappeared.

The captain's forehead creased like it always did when the corporal went out of sight. "Who do you see?" he asked into the radio.

Alice came back quick. "Can't tell but they don't look friendly. Light artillery. A dozen or so armored vehicles, and it looks like they've got a security perimeter set up."

"Same as before?"

"Don't think so. None of those red scorpion fuckers from before. Just the usual, but who the fuck knows. Either way, I don't think they'll be happy to see us."

Edward eyes flew to the rearview mirror and then back to the corner. "Bear-man, you got that? We're hanging a right in three."

Emmett's low baritone replied immediately. "Right behind you, Captain. Blondie's got the rear."

Two tense minutes later, Jasper appeared from around the corner, holding up his hand, palm in, and waved them forward. Edward nodded once and slid over to the driver's seat. "Dr. Swan," he said, sparing a quick look to the back seat. "Need you up here. You take the radio and watch that BFT screen."

Startled at the unexpected address, Bella's eyes widened, but the second the captain pointed beside him and repeated the request, she jumped up and gracelessly scrambled over the console into the passenger seat. Behind her, the rear door of the Humvee swung open, and Jasper hopped in, laid his rifle on the empty back seat, and immediately moved toward the turret.

"How'd it look?"

"All clear, sir," he replied as he popped open the hatch and darted up through the hole to copy Rosalie's position.

"How far are we?" Bella asked, eyeing the lit screen in front of her.

"Not very," Edward said as he threw the vehicle into gear. "Maybe an hour, less if we can keep moving. The last half mile, we'll go on foot."

The goat trail that Alice had warned about was exactly that. Barely discernible and hidden by a mass of low shrubs and desert grass, they almost missed it. Catching the break in the vegetation at the last possible second, Edward whipped the Humvee around, just missing a massive boulder and kicking back a fan of dust and pebbles. With a low curse, he punched the gas to start up the steep escarpment.

"I wouldn't look out the window, if I were you."

"Too late," Bella mumbled, transfixed by the canyon floor abruptly falling away. She guessed that the _road_ was no more than a foot wider than their Humvee. When she looked back at sharp angle of Rosalie and Emmett's vehicle behind them, her guess was confirmed. _Less _than a foot wider, she realized as all the color drained from her face.

"Watch the BFT, Dr. Swan. The GPS. Focus on that. Tell me which way I need go once we get to the top."

She glanced over to the captain, whose forest green eyes, while steadily trained to the narrow path in front of them, somehow betrayed not a hint of stress. When the wheels suddenly spun, jerking them right, only slightly but far enough that at least some of their back tire rode on air, he simply frowned and shifted down a gear. "You alright, Jazz?" he called over his shoulder. When the corporal yelled back a quick affirmative, he repeated to her, "Where to? The moving arrow is us and that little flag is the target. Trace it back and give me road directions."

Forcing her lungs to take a breath and her eyes to the screen, Bella followed a winding pale line with her forefinger, sorting through the maze of contour lines, roads, and creek beds. "At the top, it looks like we'll intersect another road. It's one of the really light-colored ones, so I guess that it's a local one?"

"Yeah, that's right," Edward answered, flicking the wheel to avoid a jagged rock sticking out from the face. The Humvee lurched, but kept climbing. He hastily peeked in the rearview, checking his trailing sergeants. Unperturbed by the rough terrain and dizzying drop-off, Rosalie casually swung her Ma Deuce back and forth, scanning the canyon below and behind them. "Yellow or white?"

The scientist squinted. "White, I think. It's dotted, too."

"Good." He slowed as they approached a hairpin curve. "Jazz, swing 'er around!"

There was the soft whimper of metal on metal, and then a "Good to go!"

As the nose of the Humvee swung around the corner, it looked like they were driving on air. Impenetrable rock walls rose up on all four sides, all dappled browns, grays, and glittering fissures. To Bella, Edward continued, "Do you see any villages or outposts? Any little black or white dots along that road?"

Concentrating on the screen instead of the drop in her stomach, Bella traced the line, all the way to the small black flag in the far corner. "No, there's nothing there. You'll have to turn right, though… at an intersection ten kilometers from the flag, but it's another white dotted line."

That one, he knew.

"Done." As they approached a second hairpin, he spun the wheel and told her, "Now call up Alice. Ask her where she is."

Timidly, but happy to have something to focus on rather than the sickening pitches and spins of the tires, Bella picked up the radio, depressed the button on the mic, and repeated the captain's question.

A second passed and then a static-garbled, girlish laugh responded. "Hey there, B. He puttin' you to work already?"

"Something like that…" A faint smile turned up Bella's lips.

"Tell him I'm…" The lieutenant trailed off right as the loud, fast _wop-wop-wop_ of the helo's rotors came from somewhere above, amplified and echoed off the canyon walls. "Right here. All clear topside! You're good to go!"

Four more hairpins, one of which was tight enough and narrow enough to make even Jasper curse, and they finally crested the canyon onto what looked like a vast, open desert plain. Flat, beaten down sand, with not a hint of plant life, stretched as far as the eye could see, disappearing into the wavy blur of the distant gray horizon. Above, the sky was a brilliant blue, interrupted only by a handful of white cottony tufts.

Without wasting any time, Edward grabbed the radio, barked a quick order to Emmett, and hit the gas, pushing the big block as fast as it would go. Emmett followed tight on their tail, and the two Humvees flew across the sand, kicking up a billowing cloud of sandy dust as they targeted the first intersection.

Gripping the bar on the door, Bella risked a glance over to the captain. Shades now flipped down, gloved hand tightly on the wheel, that picture of collected calm was now one of focused aggression. "Why are we–"

"I don't like being out in the open like this," Edward said, answering before the scientist could even finish voicing the question. Eyes constantly moving from mirror to mirror to windshield, he explained, "How far can you see?"

Bella gazed out the window at the endless plain. "I don't know… miles, I guess."

"Exactly. If you can see that far, so can everyone else, and I don't particularly like being seen."

Nodding, she studied the BFT screen again, watching the steady movement of their arrow. "Okay, your turn is coming up in… five kilometers. Right next to it, there's some kind of contour line that I think means a hill or something."

Surprised, Edward's brows climbed, lifting his sunglasses off the bridge of his nose. "Very good, Dr. Swan. You just keep watching that screen and make sure we stay on those white dotted lines."

Offering him a small smile, she wiped away the line of stress and sweat from her temple. "Yes, sir."

* * *

**June 12  
Undisclosed Location  
Somewhere in the Middle East**

Tucked behind a crumbling concrete wall, Bella stared at the captain's rapid hand gestures as he issued a barrage of nonverbal commands. Emmett and Jasper each nodded once, and then abruptly peeled off in separate directions, each low, close to the wall, and with a forefinger already positioned over their rifle trigger.

"Tink?" he whispered into his mic.

There was a second pause before Alice's voice came through the headset. "Still no one. You're good."

Slowly, Edward moved from a crouch to peer over the top of the concrete, looking for any signs of life in the abandoned, ramshackle tenement out here in the middle of nowhere. Just like before, it was eerily quiet, and the open windows were dark, covered by tattered, dirty curtains that fluttered in the hot breeze.

Of course, quiet and dark didn't mean a damned thing.

Dropping back down, he motioned to Rosalie who, instead of carrying her usual carbine, shouldered a matte black semi-automatic combat shotgun. She signed back and cinched her chin strap before quickly slipping around the wall. As soon as she was gone, Edward tapped Bella on the wrist, covered his mic with his palm, and mouthed, "You stay close behind me. Do whatever I do. Understand?"

Chewing her bottom lip, Bella nodded. When he turned to peep over the wall again, she focused on the straight line of his shoulders, took a deep, steadying breath, and wiped her wet, clammy palms on her pants.

Tense and alert, Edward watched as Emmett and Jasper each approached the building from either side, racing from cover to cover with quick, efficient movements honed by years spent doing exactly this. In seconds they were both there, their backs to the outside walls. Slowly, Jasper edged closer to one of the open windows, rifle at the ready. Extending a thin retractable mirror, he glimpsed inside before looking back to Edward and signaling a silent all clear. Emmett followed, issuing the same.

"Let's move," he whispered to Bella. "Keep your head down."

Eyes glued to the captain's back, her heart fully at the base of her throat, Bella followed him as he broke past the protective cover of their wall and darted over to a small stone and concrete section that looked like it had once been used as a part of a perimeter fence. Sparing only a quick glance behind him to make sure the scientist was there, carbine up and ready to fire, Edward crossed the courtyard to another section of the fence, and then finally ran in a low crouch to the tan plaster wall beside the front door to the building. Bella's back hit the wall with a quiet sigh of relief.

A second later, Rosalie appeared opposite them, a second after that, Emmett, and then Jasper. In well-practiced choreography, the four Marines formed a loose square with Rosalie and Edward at the front. A light tap on her shoulder made Bella flinch. "Stay here," the captain silently ordered before pulling his balaclava over his nose and looking over to Rosalie.

Almost as if in slow motion, holding one hand up, Edward issued a single word command into his mic, paused, and looked to each member of the team before finally dropping his hand and nodding to the waiting gunnery sergeant. The blonde's expression hardened, and as if to make up for those seconds of slow motion, everything unfolded in a lightning fast surge of MARPAT, black metal, and _speed_.

With a sudden, deafening bang, the lock shattered, and four Marines in full battle dress burst through the door. Instantly splitting into teams of two, looking down the barrels of their rifles, they searched every little nook and cranny of the building. In less than a minute, they swept the bottom floor, moving from room to room, looking for any signs of occupancy or life. Once cleared, Edward signaled the other three to move upstairs. Two minutes later, they were back down and lowering their weapons.

Bella started when the captain's head appeared around the door. Eyes wide, she whispered, "Anyone?"

Edward shook his head and _almost_ smiled at the unconscious movement of her hand to the sidearm sitting on her thigh. "Come on. We need to search the place and see if we can find anything."

Inside, it looked like a bomb had gone off. The place was a mess, with ripped up papers, trash, and old, busted furniture littering virtually every inch of the concrete floor. Most of the lights were missing bulbs and there were gaping holes in some of the walls. But the stench… that was what truly grabbed Bella's attention and made her want to gag.

As soon as Bella started down a long, narrow hallway leading toward the back of the building, Edward shot in front of her and barred her way. "You don't need to go back there, Dr. Swan. We'll take care of it."

She blanched, instantly understanding why with every step that stench had worsened. "Riley… he was –"

"You stay up here," he repeated, this time more firmly, and he placed a surprisingly gentle hand on her forearm.

Salt stung her eyes and her ears rang from her teeth clamping down too hard. Swallowing, Bella craned her neck to look over the captain's wide shoulder. At the very end of the hall, filtered sunlight poured in from a high window, and in its path, dust swirled, giving the hall a dark, murky feel. "Where did they have him working?" she whispered.

For a moment, the commander didn't answer.

"Where, Captain?" she pressed, pushing slightly against his hand until his fingers tightened.

Over the woman's head, Edward caught Emmett and Rosalie both staring at him. Rubbing his face, he exhaled and said, "In the back."

"Then that's where I need to go look."

Edward grimaced.

Far calmer than she felt, Bella quietly told him, "If there's something back there to find, I'm the only one here who'll understand it. It's why I'm here."

After a second of consideration, the grimace deepened but he finally agreed. "I'll go with you."

That back room, Bella quickly learned, was something out of her worst nightmares. From the moment Riley had been kidnapped, _this_ was what she'd feared the most. Little more than an eight by ten concrete cage, it was cramped and claustrophobic, and it reeked of human waste and death. Fans of blood spray decorated nearly every wall, and in the very center of the dirt floor, there was a dark puddle-like stain that needed no explanation.

"Stay on that side," Edward ordered, positioning himself between her and what looked like a two-foot round hole in the floor in the far corner. There was more blood on that side of the room and on the floor beside the well was a mass of sliced-up rough-cut rope.

Bile rose up Bella's esophagus and her palm clapped over her mouth.

"Pull your balaclava up and breathe through your mouth."

Bella complied immediately, and her shoulder slumped in relief as the churn in her gut settled enough that she didn't think she'd vomit. Not here and now at least. When she thought she could move again, she began to slowly sort through the short stacks of wrinkled papers on one of the tables against the wall.

Carefully scanning each document, Bella saw nothing that she didn't already know. Cursory reaction pathways, a couple of scrawled mass balances, and a long series of notes in handwriting she knew almost as well as her own, what was here was all early stuff. The way it was laid out, methodical and step-wise and completely unnecessary considering what had been in her former partner's head, it was almost as if Riley had been trying to stall his kidnappers by re-inventing and re-creating the science they'd come up with two years prior.

The second stack yielded nothing, and neither did the third, or the fourth. The only thing that really struck her was that his handwriting grew progressively sloppier and slanted, and some of the later papers were stained with dark red fingerprints that made her want to throw up all over again.

"Nothing," Bella muttered as she began to slowly pace back and forth. To the captain, she explained, "It's all stuff we already knew… stuff that's already been designed into the beta formulation that they stole to begin with."

"Did he just not know?"

Bella shook her head. "No, absolutely not. He knew what he was doing. He had ideas on where to go next. You don't understand… we were _so_ close… I think he was buying time."

The young man's terrified, pain-riddled words, spoken as he'd been hauled out of the very same hole Edward now stood guard over, echoed in his ears.

"When I pulled him out," Edward started, gauging the woman's reaction. She stilled immediately, and her lungs rasped loud enough that he could hear her breathing from across the room. "He indicated that he'd been forced to give them more than that."

Her thumb flew to her mouth where she chewed on her nail in nervous agitation. "They must have taken it and left the rest," Bella mumbled, mostly to herself. Her dark eyes lapped the room, moving from wall to wall to wall, before finally settling on a cleared whiteboard on a rickety metal stand in the corner.

With the pale light streaming into the room from the hall window, Bella could just make out the white on white residual images that cheap erasers always left behind. "Shit," she breathed, abruptly dropping to her knee to grab a handful of fine beige dust. Before Edward could ask, she sprinted across the room, looked up at the board, and then blew the dust from her hand.

Most of it fell and settled back to the floor, but the finer particles clung to the board, turning it a pale cream instead of white. Bella repeated the action twice more, darkening the board until the contrast was enough that the last erased symbols suddenly were visible.

"Dr. Swan?"

Bella didn't answer. Instead, she raced through the residual images, following Riley's last bit of work while running through a series of quick calculations in her head. When she got to the end, her eyes seemingly cemented to the circled formula and diagram in the far corner, time stood still.

"Dr. Swan," Edward repeated, enunciating each syllable. "What do you see?"

"Fuck, he did it," she whispered, tearing off her helmet. It hit the floor with a dull thud.

"He did what? Figured out the formula?"

A shudder rolled down her spine as she slowly turned. "Everything, Captain. Riley figured out _everything_."

Edward stepped toward her. "What do you mean _everything_?"

"All of it." Her throat bobbed and her hands shook. "The formula, a temporary stabilization protocol… the _delivery system._"

At that Edward froze. "How are they planning to deliver it?"

"A warhead."

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes: **I'm taking creative license with regards to fuel consumption. In my world, helicopters can go for days…

* * *

**Hebrew** (transliterated)**:**

_Seren – _Captain (military). Recall from last chapter, _Rav Seren_ means "major".

_Az mah – _So / so what?

_Ze nachon_ – It's true

_Neshama, A__ni shelach – Neshama _means "soul" and is used kind of like "darling". _Ani shelach_ means "I'm yours."

_Ad kan – _Enough / I've had it up to here

_Hishtagata – _Are you mad/crazy?

_Batu'ach? – _Are you sure / are you sure about that?

_Yirtzah HaShem – _God willing

_Todah veShalom – _Thank you and goodbye

_Kacha HaChayim – _That's the way it goes / that's life.

* * *

**Glossary:**

_BFR_ – Big Fucking Rock

_BFT_ – or Blue Force Tracking, is essentially a complex military-grade GPS / GIS system that provides commanders and forces information about roads, geographical data, battle data, and proximity to friendlies and enemy forces.

_Carbine _– in the chapter above specifically refers to the M4A1 carbine, which is a fully automatic variant of the M4 assault rifle and is used by various Special Operations Forces during Black Ops. It's a close quarters weapon, often used by counter terrorist groups and in urban warfare. It fires a 5.56x45mm NATO round.

_Combat shotgun_ – or breaching shotgun, in the chapter above specifically refers to the Benelli M1014, which is commonly used by various Special Operations Forces. Combat shotguns typically have considerably shorter barrels than a normal hunting shotgun, are 12 gauge, and in some cases may sport magazines, which enable the user to fire more than the usual 5 shells before reloading. Because of the shotgun's scatter pattern, requiring less precise aim to hit a target, it's a useful weapon when breaching a potential enemy building or holding.

_M2_ – or 50 Cal, or Ma Deuce, or M2 Browning Machine Gun, is a .50 caliber heavy machine gun and is widely used by the United States military, as well as various other countries. It can be mounted to Humvees, aircraft, etc., or used on its own.

_M110_ – or the Knight's Armament Company M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System, or M110 SASS, is a semi-automatic sniper rifle that is chambered for the 7.62x51mm NATO round. The Marine Corps is currently in the process of replacing the M39 Enhanced Marksman Rifle (EMR), which replaced the M14 United States Marine Corps Designated Marksman Rifle, with the M110.

_Ringmount_ – circular framework on which a machine gun can be mounted such that the gunner has 360° range of fire.

_Zero dark thirty_ – or oh dark thirty, or oh dark hundred, refers to "sometime very early in the morning". Depends on who you ask if it's said with a "zero" or an "oh". Those less inclined to be awake in the early morning hours might prefer, "stupid dark thirty" or "oh god thirty" instead, lol.


	5. Chapter 5

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale** are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**June 12  
Undisclosed Location  
Somewhere in the Middle East**

"Did you find anything?"

Bent over a pile of quarter-inch wide shreds of paper, Corporal Jasper Whitlock frowned and shook his head. "Just a bunch of old cash receipts from a coffee house and some kind of local _bâzâr_." With a quick flick of his wrist, he motioned over to the other side of the room where Emmett stood sentry by the open window. There beside the sergeant on top of a beat up foldout table sat a hammered brass wastebasket – an ugly old thing straight out of a long-gone era. Its patina was splotchy and dark from years and use, nothing that strange considering their locale, but the telltale coating of char around the bent metal lip told a different story.

"That's where the real intell is… what's left of it anyway," Jasper went on as he held up a strip of paper to the light. Finding nothing but another long column of rial symbols, he tossed it aside to claim another. "There's what looks like two ticket stubs left on top of the ash. Can't read the dates or the names, though. These fuckers were smart enough to burn their tracks."

With a quick dip of his chin, Edward crossed the room, stealing a hard glance at the trailing scientist just before reaching the table. Quiet and focused on the floor as she tiptoed her way through the maze of debris, fear was a dark storm in the woman's eyes, washing her too-soft, too-fine face in a wet sheen of stress-induced sweat. Tucked under her teeth, her bottom lip was as white as the rest of her complexion, and by her sides, her gloved fists looked like tight little hammers covered in suede. Edward cursed under his breath. Regardless of her good intentions, shooting, or weapons expertise, Dr. Isabella Swan was every bit the lamb cut loose in the middle of the ruthless savannah that he'd named her to be.

But then again, it wasn't like he could blame the woman, Edward thought as he wiped the dust and grime off his face with his sleeve. Her whispered words from mere moments ago – terrifying in both their potential and their shaky delivery – still ricocheted inside his own skull. Only an idiot wouldn't be shaking right now. So when the big man by the window shifted his rifle and cocked a curious brow at their approach, Edward just shook his head and mouthed a silent, "Give her a minute." Then, as he loosened his chinstrap, to Jasper, he asked, "Can you at least get the airline off those stubs?"

The younger man shrugged and chucked the rest of the shredded papers into an empty cardboard box before following the captain over to the table. "It's hard to tell without being able to read the lettering, but there's an artsy-looking bird of some sort in the corner. So I'm guessing Mahan or Caspian. Both would have regular flights through Tehran."

"Did you pull up the flight schedules already?"

"Yes, sir."

"You alright, Doc?" Emmett asked, eyeing the green tint of Bella's downturned face as the two other Marines continued their speculations. When she looked up, half-dazed, like she wasn't entirely sure where she was, he reached into one of his chest pouches and tossed her a blister pack that rattled with a dozen small white squares. "Strong, and it tastes like shit, but it'll cut through some of the stink so you don't want to hurl all the time."

Catching the pack out of reflex more than intent, Bella grimaced because it wasn't the smell that made her want to vomit. At least not now. Nonetheless, she nodded a wordless thanks, gave herself a hard shake, and popped two of the squares. When she bit down on the no-name pieces of gum, a sudden rush of menthol flooded her mouth, burned through her respiratory system, and made her eyes water, almost as though she'd just swallowed one of the mothballs her grandmother used to toss up into the attic. But the staff sergeant was right. The pungent fire cut right through the stench of death and decay, and more importantly, it cleared her mind enough that the circling images of Riley's whiteboard – and all that it meant – came to a screeching halt and brought the room back into sharp focus.

"It's Mahan," Edward muttered as he tilted the bin toward the incoming light from the window and carefully lifted the edge of one of the blackened stubs with the tip of a slender, black metal pen. "And that… that might be a 'v' and an 'i'. But you're right," he spat, "can't see shit."

Jasper peered into the brass basket, mimicking his commander's harsh scowl. "If we can manage to get a few of these scraps back to the Humvee without breaking them into a thousand goddamned pieces…" His head tilted. "I _might_ have something that'll help us see the leftover ink. Maybe. We can try… Sometimes glycol can swell…"

"You need sub-750 nanometers…" Bella interjected, speaking without really thinking, and then trailing off mid-sentence when the two men abruptly swung around to face her. The captain's brow arched high, hiding beneath the low rim of his helmet, as he glanced over to the corporal. Instead of rebuking her for the interruption like she expected, when she didn't continue, he quietly urged her on, "Go ahead, Doctor. We're listening."

Shoving a string of damp hair back up under her own helmet, Bella took a deep breath that called attention to every bit of the weight she wasn't used to wearing. Like Emmett's hellfire gum, the pressure of the armor was grounding, centering her in the here and now rather than in the possibilities of what lay ahead. She inhaled again, deeper, sucking down a lungful of menthol-flavored death, and then slowly walked over to the table to take a closer look at what was left of the burned papers. Not much at all – a scant inch and a half of sooty cellulose, and with edges so thin they'd turn to dust if breathed on wrong – but _maybe_. "Do you think you can fish them out?"

Edward nodded once – a quick, succinct movement of someone accustomed to making important decisions with very little time to debate. "If you think you can do something, we'll certainly try."

Bella looked from the captain to the corporal, and then back to the captain again, whose bright gemstone irises now studied her as carefully as she'd studied the stubs. "When I was in graduate school…" she explained, waving a haphazard hand. "I took a couple of elective physics courses. In one, we studied optics and we spent some time on reflectography, labs included." Bella paused and began digging through one of the deeper pouches by her hip. "Sometimes what you can't see in the visible spectrum, in other words, with the naked eye… like a painting underneath another painting, for example… you _can_ see if you can capture the image using different wavelengths of light…"

"Like infrared," Jasper piped in, right as Bella produced her night vision goggles. When she nodded in surprise, he flashed her a sudden, out of place, and almost excited-looking grin that reminded her all too well how Riley used to happily pounce on their discoveries, regardless of the risk or ramifications. "Damn, that's a good idea, Doc," he said, immediately yanking off his gloves. "I hadn't even thought about that. We've even got thermal on these, too. Between the two and a little unauthorized tuning, I bet we'll see something."

"You think it'll work?" Edward asked.

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Bella shrugged. "I'm not sure of anything, to be honest, but in theory, maybe. It's worth a shot at least…"

Palm over his mouth, gray eyes intent and focused on the table before them, Jasper thought for a long moment before plucking Bella's goggles out of her hand. "Agree," he finally said as he began efficiently stripping off the attached helmet bracket. "The absorption range of the ink ought to be different enough from the left over paper underneath it, and the soot on top is pretty much all carbon so it'll definitely be in a different region. We _should_ see three distinct image layers." He flicked on the goggles and fiddled with two of the knobs until a high-frequency ascending whine kicked on. "It may take a little trial and error, and I may wind up wrecking the circuitry, but we should be able to get enough absorption contrast to see _something_." Crinkling his nose and motioning toward the basket, he added, "Either way, it's a much better option than trying to carry this shit with us and me dumping a bunch of antifreeze on it to see if the paper'll swell."

Out here in the middle of the desert, in an abandoned, bloodied bolthole where her colleague had been tucked away and tortured for his knowledge, and surrounded by a group of battle-hardened Marines, the corporal's answer wasn't what Bella expected to hear at all. "How –"

Jasper shot the scientist another split-second grin, whipped out his leatherman, and then shoved the tip of the collapsible screwdriver into one of the slots on her goggles. The hard plastic casing split with a loud _crack!_, revealing a complex circuit board and a series of tiny tubes. "I was an EE before I enlisted." He winked. "UT-Austin."

Slowly shaking her head, as if that were a perfectly reasonable and expected response, Bella tucked her middle and ring fingers under her thumb and muttered under her breath, "Hook 'em Horns."

Before Jasper could bark out a laugh, Edward cut in, short, to the point, and all business. "Alright. Jazz, you and Dr. Swan, see what you can find. Wreck whatever you need to, but do it quick. I don't want us here any longer than we have to be. Ten minutes, max, and then we move. Clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where's Blondie?"

Emmett answered first, pointing toward the stairs behind them. "Upstairs."

As the captain spun toward the back of the room, Bella caught him by the elbow. "Do you still have your flashlight?"

For whatever reason, he didn't reply at first. Instead, like before when they'd stood on the tarmac in the middle of the Negev, the two just stared until after a moment, Bella's fingers gave an involuntary squeeze, pressing into the hard, sinewy muscle of Edward's forearm and startling them both. She swallowed as her hand fell away. "That little dim one from this morning?" she mumbled. "We might need an artificial light source and that LED is pale and almost white in color." Not looking away, finding what in her expression she didn't know, Edward nodded – another one of those short, succinct movements of his – and before she could blink, a small cylinder of cool steel found her palm. A second later, flashlight in hand, Bella watched Edward's long stride eat up the room before taking the stairs two at a time and disappearing above.

She didn't turn away until a quiet, "You ready to try this, Doc?" came from her right.

Upstairs, unconsciously rubbing his arm where five fingerprints of warmth still lingered, Edward followed the sounds of cursing and slamming drawers down a long, narrow hall lined with crooked pictures of a family years-since evacuated. Like the downstairs rooms, the concrete floor up here was covered in trash and debris, but it was darker, with even fewer working bulbs on the walls and the ceilings. Inside the rooms, little more than slivers of late afternoon sunlight peeked around the edges of the window coverings to light the spaces, just enough to make out the handful of thin, single-sized mattresses in the corners. He counted upwards of twenty, and that was just this location.

Silent, out of habit more than anything, Edward didn't stop until he reached the last door on the left, what had once served as a child's bedroom. Faded cartoon characters decorated the walls – a yellow lion, a pale blue bear.

"Anything?" Rosalie muttered as she squatted down low to rummage through the bottom drawer of a small cream-colored bureau positioned against the far wall. She spared the captain a quick, cursory glance before tossing a wad of old baby clothes into an already-heaping pile.

Not surprised that the gunnery sergeant had detected him, nor at her terse address, Edward pulled out a compact, black satellite phone and began quickly typing. "Worse than we thought," he finally answered.

Standing, the gunny gave a loud huff of aggravation. "How much worse?"

When Edward looked up from the screen, what greeted him was a pair of ice blue eyes, cool, measuring, and now fully trained on him from across the room. "About as worse as it can get."

"Mother. Fuck."

"That about sums it up," he said, grimacing.

Abandoning the bureau and the rest of the room, Rosalie walked over and leaned against the doorframe. "Fully functional?" she asked as she crossed her arms and settled into an uncannily still position that Edward recognized immediately. From years of observation, he'd concluded that the vast majority of people, military and non, gave away their fear or anxiety through nervous agitation and uncontrolled movements. But Rosalie Hale wasn't the majority of people. When a rare something made her nervous, she didn't move at all. She just looked pissed off, and right now, from what Edward could see, she was angry enough to spit fire.

"Probably." Edward's grimace hardened as his fingers flew through the last few lines to the General. "Dr. Swan found what she thinks was Dr. Biers' last bit of work. Thinks he tried to stall them as long as he could."

Nails digging through her blouse into the tops of her arms, Rosalie swore again and glowered at a dark charcoal-colored scuffmark on the bottom half of the doorframe. "And we didn't get to him fast enough, right?"

Edward shook his head, hit the send button on the short report, and then tucked the phone back into his pocket – right next to the slim burgundy case containing three as yet untested XR-5 antidote injectors. When his fingers brushed over the case, he couldn't stop the eerie thought that said that the good doctor's Friday night skunk work might just prove necessary after all.

"Goddamned CIA."

"Pretty much." Edward shifted opposite, copying Rosalie's pose but against the wall at the end of the hall where he could face her and anything coming. His gaze automatically skipped down the long passageway, stopping at each open doorway, as he listened to the muffled voices of the two Marines and the scientist below. Individual words were impossible to discern through the echo and dense flooring, but from the timbre of their conversation, it sounded like they were making progress. Hopefully, they were. After a second, Edward scratched his chin and blew out a long, slow breath through pinched lips. "Dr. Swan says she thinks Biers got it stable enough to mount on a warhead."

The gunnery sergeant didn't even flinch. "Then we assume that's what they have."

"That's the best case," Edward replied.

"Worst?"

"Worst, that it's not one but several, and they're already auctioning."

"Or aiming…" Rosalie finished with a growl, her fist clenching inside the crook of the opposite elbow. "Do we have any leads? 'Cause I didn't find shit up here."

The captain stared down the dark hall, his features hard, as grim as death itself. It was an expression Rosalie had seen more times than she could count, and none of those times had been good ones. "Not much," he said after a second, his voice as hard as his features. "Jazz and the Doc are working on some old burned up papers, trying to see if they can figure out any of the names or dates…" Edward shoved his hands in his pockets and dropped his gaze to the floor, tracing a jagged crack in the concrete. "But fuck knows if they'll find anything. Hoping the General'll come through with some news from Langley. I'll call up El'azar when we get back to the vehicles and see if he can dig up anything else, too." He paused, brows furrowed, and when he spoke again, there was an edge of finely honed anger in his voice, something beyond his normal, no-nonsense tone. And _that _made Rosalie blink because that kind of emotion wasn't something she was used to hearing from their commander, at least not in the field. "Between you and me? Rose, this is a fucking mess."

"No shit." Shrugging a pair of tense shoulders as though this were any other operation on any other given day, Rosalie pushed off the doorframe and sighed. "But it is what it is." A long minute passed, and then without any other cue than the subtle tells developed from years of working side by side, the two began to walk in unison toward the stairs. Before they reached the end of the hall, putting on a faint smirk that had no business being worn – now of all times – Rosalie bumped Edward's arm and asked, "So, she's pretty smart, huh?"

Edward's lips tugged up at the corners into the barest hint of an involuntary smile at the gunny's unexpected query. More so, at the grudging respect he heard buried in her smartass tone. "Seems that way," he said slowly, that earlier glimpse of anger now strangely – or _not_ so strangely, Rosalie thought – absent.

With an undisguised roll of her eyes, she slung her shotgun around and behind her back. "Whatever. I can't believe you gave her your sidearm." She spat and shot the captain a pointed glare. "If she shoots me or dislocates her shoulder or some other stupid shit like that, it's on your ass. You know that, right?"

"I do."

"Good. Just wanted to make sure you hadn't lost your mind."

That barely-there tight-lipped smile widened. "She shoots better than Em."

Rolling her eyes again, this time with an accompanying noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, Rosalie started down the stairs. Without looking back, she called out, "Who doesn't?"

He chuckled as he followed her down, but before he even hit the bottom step, Edward's head twisted around to survey the room, instinctively checking each point of entry. Now at the opposite window from the table, Emmett scanned the horizon through a pair of rangefinder binoculars, muttering under his breath.

"What is it?"

Shoulders bunching, the big man frowned, but he didn't pull away from the lenses. Instead, with a grumbled curse, he toggled one of the switches and hit the ranging button on top. "Maybe nothing. Maybe dust… Maybe a herd of fucking camels. Hard to tell out here."

"You call Tink?"

"Not yet," Emmett muttered. "'Bout to, though. I want to see if she can do another sweep of that canyon before we move out. I don't like that those asshat amateurs are so close."

Nodding, Edward moved to the center of the room and motioned over to Rosalie. "Blondie, do a final check out back, will ya?" Already heading in that direction, with a quick, efficient inclination of her chin, she shouldered her shotgun and slipped down the hall toward the backdoor. When she disappeared around the corner, silent as a church mouse, the captain turned back to Emmett and asked, "Where's Jazz?"

"Here," Jasper answered. When Edward swung around, he caught a pair of dusty boots edging backward and out from under an old tarp that had been doubled up and draped over a couple of chairs – a makeshift tent of sorts – in the back corner. It was the darkest area in the room, and the gray-brown coloring of the tarp blended against the similar color of the concrete walls so well that he almost missed the second pair of boots, unmoving and peeking out from beneath the tarp, their smaller soles just visible.

Jasper emerged and stood, quickly swiping dirt from his knees, and then he blinked a handful of times against the brighter space before gesturing to the tent. "Wasn't dark enough out here so we had to make it night." A slow, sly grin spread across the younger man's face. "But, Captain, the Doc was _right_... Fucked her goggles all up, just like I was afraid we'd have to do, but it worked. Better than I guessed it would."

A small amount of the tension in Edward's spine uncoiled. Walking over to the impromptu darkroom, he asked them both, "What'd you find?"

From under the tarp came a muffled voice, the words muttered fast and tinged with the same excitement all over the corporal's new perma-grin. "They arrived a few weeks ago, _three_ of them, not two, we think. Can't tell 100% because of where the stubs were torn, but one of them arrived either the thirteenth or the fifteenth of May. The other two," Bella went on, rustling the tarp when she waved her hand without thinking. "I think it says the twenty eighth of April. Could be the twenty sixth, but we found another partially recoverable travel document underneath the stubs that seems to support the twenty eighth. And that would agree with the timing of Riley's disappearance."

"And it _was_ Mahan," Jasper added. "Definitely. Even got the flight numbers, so we can get the spooks to cross check the dates. Might even hack the security cameras for images."

"Names?"

Bella's head popped out from under the tarp, and she tilted her head straight up to look at the captain. Smudges of dirt colored her cheeks and twin rivulets of sweat ran down her temples, not exactly the image of an ivory tower scientist in a pristine white lab coat. But from the brace of her jaw and creases at the corners of her eyes, Edward could almost taste the twinge of annoyance at his interruption. The fear from before was long-gone, too, replaced with a kind of focused drive that told him that the person he was seeing right now was who she actually was. "Last names only, and one's just a partial," she rattled off, stopping to chew her lip. She made a face, spitting out the grit that'd found its way there, and then made an even more sour face once she realized what she'd just done.

"What were they?" he asked, _almost _smiling again.

Bella blew wet hair away from her face. "The document, we couldn't tell. But the stub from May, the person went by something or other James. The other stub – the one from late April – had what looked like a last name of Victor. Or something like that. That one was female, though."

Edward's forehead folded. "How do you know that?"

Unbalanced and awkward from the bulk of her vest, Bella slowly crawled out from the tent, stood, and then scrubbed the sweat from her face, doing nothing but spreading those dark smudges until her bone-white complexion turned gray. "It was stamped through a different security line. Jasper said the symbols in the stamp were all feminine."

Still by the window, but facing inside, Emmett shoved the binoculars into his pack and crossed his arms over his massive chest. "What the hell would a wo– "

Before he could finish, a sudden burst of static shrieked through their headsets.

"Captain?!" The lieutenant's voice was high, tight, and even louder than usual. Without asking, Edward knew exactly what was coming next, and so did the other two Marines in the room. Stances instantly shifted, rifle positions changed, and all three men eyeballed the open desert through the window.

"Go ahead, Tink."

"Just thought I'd let you know I'm taking fire." Emmett's eyes flew to Edward's, as another burst of static pulsed through the headsets. This time, a series of three hollow-sounding thumps – RPGs from the sound of them, and far too close to Alice's helo for comfort – followed.

"Fuck," Edward muttered right as Rosalie appeared from the rear and immediately took position opposite Emmett and Jasper at the second window. Into his mic, he said, "You asking me permission?"

Over the rhythmic _wop-wop-wop_ of the rotor blades, a barrage of machine gun fire answered. A second later, a missile launched, the loud shushing sound of a hellfire air-to-ground lighting off. There was a long pause, and then a jarring boom that vibrated the walls echoed in the distance. Alice growled a triumphant, "More like forgiveness!"

Shoulders shaking, Emmett chuckled into his mic. "Ooh rah!"

"Details, Lieutenant," Edward barked, as he began to simultaneously issue rapid-fire silent commands. At nothing more than a pointed look and minute nod, Jasper bolted up the stairs, and then after a series of quick hand gestures – a language Bella couldn't follow – the two sergeants began moving with purposeful intent. Rosalie dropped to a knee and began sifting through her drop pouches, producing grenades and multiple magazines, each pre-loaded with more than a dozen shells. "What's your position?" Edward asked, one fist balled tight at his hip.

There was another ear-splitting round of machine gun fire before Alice responded. "Stupid assholes… 13 klicks to your southeast. Just circled back to check the canyon again. When I got there, they started lobbing all kinds of shit. Got half a dozen still on the ground and keeping me busy, but, Captain, there's three coming your way."

"Visible artillery?"

"Light armor only, but one of 'em has that scorpion symbol on its hood. I don't know where he came from. Wasn't there in the canyon when we came in."

Edward glanced over to Rosalie. "Fine. See any individuals?"

"No faces, but the guy with the scorpion is wearing dark fatigues, and he looks like some kind of warlord. Just a couple people per vehicle, though – maybe seven or eight – and they're all carrying AKs."

"How long?" Edward asked, as he checked his watch before reaching into his pocket for the satellite phone.

As Alice answered, frozen in place, Bella's gaze cut over to Emmett as he began rapidly snapping together a second rifle, this one bigger than the one he'd carried to breach the building. It was meaner, too, and belt-fed. Using the wide cement sill and a black tripod attached to the barrel, he aimed the weapon toward the southeast side of the building. He dug into his pack and pulled out a long, tinkling strip of shiny brass cartridges.

"They're booking it, Captain… Five minutes… at most. You saw going in it's open desert, too. Don't see how you can get back to the Humvees without them spotting you. Want me to ditch these fuckers here and take 'em out?"

Edward looked down at his phone and to the blinking LED in the corner. He tapped the screen, bringing up a single-line response from the General to the report and request he'd sent while upstairs:

_Carte blanche. Do whatever you have to do._

In less than the span of a single breath, Edward's eyes, near black in the low ambient light, lapped the room, briefly pausing at each Marine before training themselves to the now ashen, slack-jawed expression on Bella's face. He thought for less than second, his features again focused and hard – _calculating _– and then he replied, "No, let 'em come."

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes: **

**Happy New Year! **I'll apologize a hundred times for the unexpected hiatus. Work decided to rear its ugly head and command way too much of my time. Thankfully, that seems to have settled down a bit, so I'm already working on the next chapter :)

**Thank you so much for reading, **doubly so for those kind enough to drop me a comment or two. I really do love hearing from you.

* * *

**Glossary:**

_AK_ – or AK-47, or Kalashnikov, is a selective-fire assault rifle originally developed by the USSR. It fires a 7.62x38mm M43/M67 round. The weapon is now manufactured in multiple countries and is widely used around the world, by military and non-military groups.

_Bâzâr _– transliterated Farsi (language spoken in Iran) for bazaar, which is like a market, or place where goods can be bought and sold.

_Belt-fed – _for larger automatic weapons, which in the case of Emmett's M240B General Purpose Machine Gun that fires a 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge, ammunition is often fed to the weapon via a belt instead of a magazine. It basically allowed the operator to fire anywhere from 100 to 200 rounds between loadings.

_EE_ – short for Electrical Engineer

_Infrared_ – a region of the electromagnetic spectrum, situated between the visible light range (what our eyes can see) and microwave in terms of wavelength. Without going into a lot of detail, the wavelength and frequency of a given wave determine if the electromagnetic energy can pass through a given media (absorption). For example, x-rays (another region in the spectrum) can pass though your skin and muscle layers, whereas plain old visible light waves from a flashlight cannot. Human eyes can't see infrared or near-infrared light waves, but in technology such as that used in night vision equipment/goggles (NVG) or in thermal imaging, they can be converted into the visible range. NVG essentially shift photons into electrons, which are amplified and multiplied through various physical or chemical means, and are then re-converted, but into waves in the visible range. Basically NVG use available infrared or near-infrared light sources to augment ambient light, and are thus able to increase human eye capability when there's little/no natural visible light.

_Infrared reflectography_ – or IRR, is a real technique that utilizes infrared waves and is frequently used in art history to determine if there are paintings beneath other paintings. The technique employs a specially designed camera, which sends infrared light waves toward the target painting and then "takes a picture" of what bounces back. The various paints, inks, and other substances will either absorb or reflect the waves at different rates and intensities. The resulting "picture" is an almost 3-dimensional-looking gray on gray rendering of _all_ the layers, including what's hidden. It's pretty slick.

[**Note:** But… while reflectography and night vision both employ infrared light waves in some way, they are not the same technology at all. In other words, don't bother taking your night vision goggles to the art gallery or to a forensics laboratory, lol. The stuff in the chapter above is me just playing around and making up some physics cause it's fun.]

_Mahan_ – Mahan Air (as well as Caspian Airlines) is a real airline headquartered in Tehran, Iran. It offers domestic service as well as international, primarily within the Middle East and Asia. Interestingly enough, in 2011, there was an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, which was uncovered in an operation the FBI termed "Operation Red Coalition". Mahan Air was named as a financial and material supporter of the militant group behind the plot.

_Rangefinder_ – is a device, much like a pair of binoculars, but with the added feature of laser technology for measuring distance to an object in the field of sight.

_Rial_ – Iranian currency

_Sidearm_ – a pistol, or specifically the recently contracted .45 caliber M45 Close Quarter Battle Pistol (CQBP), which is the USMC variant of the Colt 1911 Rail Gun, which will be not a complete replacement of, but rather an upgrade to the currently used M-45 MEUSOC .45 caliber sidearm, which is also based on the 1911 design.

_Skunk works_ – is a term commonly used by scientists and engineers to describe research/work done "off the books" or in a way outside of the normal protocols.

_Spook_ – nickname for a spy, agent, or operative, from any intelligence agency (CIA, FBI, etc.)


	6. Chapter 6

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale** are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**June 12  
Undisclosed Location  
Somewhere in the Middle East**

Five minutes was both nothing and forever.

Knees locked, frozen in the very center of the room, and surrounded by debris and the stench of death, Bella stared at the solid, straight line of the captain's shoulders as he issued another round of too-fast-to-follow silent commands to the sergeants, each stationed by a window, while continuing to communicate through the headset with his helo pilot. In matching clipped tones and using shortened phrases that formed their own kind of language, the two went back and forth, ending when Alice rattled off a set of coordinates that made those straight shoulders flex and bunch.

"_Damn it_. Go ahead and take it out."

"Working on it, sir," the lieutenant answered back before killing the transmission.

With an audible snap of his teeth and another low, muttered curse, Edward spun back around, wearing a severe, cut-from-granite expression that had no exact name. Grim, determined, angry… it all fit, but the sharp glint that appeared in his eyes when his forefinger depressed the magazine release on his carbine, initiating a swap so fast that Bella would have missed it had she blinked, said that there was more to it than that. It took her a second to recognize what she saw, but as he shoved a new magazine into place with a loud, metallic clack that made her flinch, it hit her.

A kind of eagerness lurked in those dark forest depths. But it wasn't bloodlust or an anticipation for violence. No, she realized, it was that of a highly trained professional who was in his element – a predator stretching his muscles in preparation for the hunt. It told her that the captain had a very good idea as to what was coming at them, that he had experienced the same too many times to count, and more so, that those militants, regardless of their numbers, were going to _lose_.

And _that_ bit of understanding was what finally unlocked her knees and made the next breath come a little easier. Just enough reassurance to restore function.

Responding to one of those rapid non-verbal commands, with two quick _zing!s_, Emmett and Rosalie jerked the tattered remains of the window coverings across their rods, taking with them most of what little light they had. "Here," Emmett called across the room, tossing Rosalie the M4 he'd carried in.

"Doctor," Edward said, flicking on the same dim flashlight Bella had just returned to illuminate the floor. When her head turned, he swung the beam in a sweeping arc toward the rear of the room, past the temporary darkroom she and Jasper had constructed, to a low triangular cubbyhole formed by the underside of the steps to the second floor. Surrounded on three sides by gray-brown concrete walls and stairs, the small space was still open to the room, but there was a large support column in front that made the hole almost invisible in the darkness. She'd missed that when they'd come in, but of course, the captain hadn't. "I want you in there."

Before Bella could open her mouth, in question or in protest, Edward's hand sliced the air. "Don't bother. It's dark, we're going to be moving fast, and there's likely going to be a firefight. I don't want to have to worry about any strays finding their way to you when those fuckers try to breach the building. Which they _will_ try to do, and it's not that much of stretch to think one or two might make it through the door."

She jumped when Edward reached across to pluck her sidearm from her holster, his sight seemingly unaffected by the low light. "You're good, but… take this." He snapped a slim black cylinder-looking device she hadn't seen before to the notched rail on the bottom of the barrel, and then in a lightning-fast move, he flipped the sidearm around, placed it directly in her hand, and curled her fingers around the grip, giving her fist a light squeeze before letting go.

Glowing bright red, a slim laser line stretched from her barrel to the dead center of Edward's chest. "Exactly…" Thumbing toward the cubby, he swung the flashlight to light the path again. "So, you. Under there. Now."

"What–"

"And safety off, Dr. Swan."

Her brows shot up.

"You should _not_ need it," he went on, ignoring whatever he saw in her reaction. "But if something unexpected happens and one of them somehow makes it past us, shoot him before he gets anywhere close. Don't sit there and rationalize or think that he won't find you. Take him out. Clear?"

"Yeah, got it… take him out," Bella muttered under her breath, nodding more out of compliance than real comprehension. Her throat bobbed as she stared down at the sand-colored weapon in her hand and then again when she glanced over to Emmett, who now wore a startlingly similar expression to his commander's. "You do what he says, Doc," the big man said as he slid on a pair of slick-looking wraparound lenses. He flashed her a quick, toothy grin, but even in the shadows, Bella could see that it lacked any of his usual humor. "These are the bad guys. You see anything that looks even remotely like a face, you nail that SOB."

From the other side of the room, there was the telltale latch of a chambered around and Rosalie growled, "And don't stop til he hits the floor and quits breathing."

A tinny voice came through the headset, "Captain? I can see 'em in my scope."

Not taking his eyes off the woman in front of him, Edward thumbed toward the cubby again. This time when she nodded, there was a little more fortitude in the movement, and her narrow shoulders squared before she turned. As she followed the path he lit through the maze of trash, Edward asked the corporal, "How far?"

"Tink was right, they are _moving_. Around 1800 yards out, but it's tough to say for sure for all the dust and shit they're raising. Not exactly the stealthiest folks I've seen."

A few miles off in the distance, there was a sudden wall-shaking boom as another one of Alice's hellfire air-to-ground missiles hit its target. "As always, Jazz – the King of Understatement," she cut in with a tinkling laugh, her transmission carrying with it a loud peppering of heavy round machine gun fire from her chin-mounted M2.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, Fairy-girl."

Edward peeked around a window covering and tracked the small cloud of dust moving across the horizon. "They know we're here and they know we know they're coming," he said. "No need to hide… Just keep on 'em and let me know when they spread out. I want to know exactly where that warlord, or whatever the fuck he is, goes."

"Yes, sir."

By the time Bella slipped behind the support column and into the small, triangular space, the room had gone deathly silent. Heart already pounding a jagged rhythm that her lungs had no hope of keeping up with, she didn't trust her legs to stay upright if the captain's predictions were right, so she slumped against the wall and slid down into a low crouch. From her position, she had a direct line of sight to the dark-on-darker outlines of the captain and Emmett standing by the east-facing window. Following his orders, with a shaking finger, she clicked off the safety, aimed the weapon at the floor, and squeezed its grip until her knuckles were white and scraping against the suede lining of her gloves.

"They're slowing down and splitting," she heard Jasper whisper in her headset. "1000 yards. Blondie, you ought to be able to see the first one in a couple of seconds."

"Already got 'em," she answered back.

"You got a 360?" Edward asked.

"Yes, sir," Jasper said. "Roof's all clear."

"Good. Can you get a visual inside the vehicles? What are we lookin' at?"

There was a moment of tense silence before Jasper replied. "Three vehicles, two are old M998s that look like they've been up-armored with some kind of shit scrap. That scorpion one is brand spanking new, though. There's some good toys on it, too."

"Numbers?"

"Tink was close – two in the first, three in the second. Locals, I'm guessing, but the way some of 'em are holding their rifles tells me they know how to dance. Former Revolutionary Guards, or _Basij_ maybe."

The corporal paused for another second. "That scorpion fucker is trailing. Main dude's ridin' shotgun and yakking on a cell phone. Got some ugly ass jungle fatigues on, and one of his eyes is all fucked up. From the looks of him, I'm thinking… central Africa somewhere. Maybe Congolese or Rwandan or from some other garden spot like that."

Edward glanced over to Rosalie, pulled his balaclava up, and nodded. "How many with him?"

"700 yards… There's a driver and a gunner in a pretty badass turret rocking a shitty old MG3. I can take him out easy if you want."

"Wait," Edward answered as he moved toward the door, stopping just shy and plastering his back to the wall. "If he pulls out a grenade launcher or some shit like that, take him down quick. Do _not_ hit Mr. Congo. I'd like to have a word with him."

"You got it."

"Blondie, Bear-man, wait for the signal. As soon as they start crawling out of their vehicles and approaching, open fire on anything that moves. I don't want them getting inside this room. And I don't want _any_ surprises when we go to get out of here. Clear?"

The two sergeants responded in quick, practiced unison. "Yes, sir."

"Jazz," Edward said into his mic. "When that scorpion fucker stops, wait for them to exit. He may have his driver stop short and hang back so the locals can do all the dirty work. If he starts peeling back, make it so he can't." Glancing around the room, he eyed the two main windows. "We've only got a couple of windows and the door, so the front corners are blind. I'll need you to keep on directing traffic."

"Will do, Captain."

"But Corporal," Edward continued as he raised his rifle, tucking it neat against his shoulder, and adjusted the illuminator on the rail with a couple of efficient twists. _Just in case_, he thought, as a bright green laser line cut through the dark. "It will piss me off immensely if you don't stay low."

"Got it, sir… 400 yards. Bear-man, that second vehicle is coming your direction. Blondie, straight at you."

"Yep, I see 'em." The big man nosed his M240 to the right to track the approaching vehicle. "Man, that _is_ some shit armor," he added, staring through his scope before addressing their commander. "I don't get it, Captain. This is like some rag-tag afterthought. Like a clean up crew that they weren't expecting to have to use."

Cinching her chinstrap, Rosalie barked out a laugh. "Or one they didn't give a fuck about getting picked off."

Jasper's quiet whisper came through the headset again. "150 yards and they're slowing to a stop. Main dude is issuing some orders into a brick of a radio."

Emmett aimed his weapon through the windshield of the stopping Humvee, targeting the steel-faced driver. The man's face was drenched with sweat. "Maybe," he grumbled at Rosalie. "I'm guessing the assholes we're really after are long gone, out of country somewhere. Doesn't explain Mr. Congo, though."

Low and unruffled, a tone the other Marines in the room recognized immediately, Edward broke in, "Doesn't matter. We'll find out soon enough." Kicking the heavy wooden door ajar, introducing a thin diagonal swath of light that lit a white stripe across the floor, the captain glanced back to the rear of the room where he could just make out the shadowed edge of the cubbyhole beneath the stairs. "You good, Dr. Swan?" he asked.

Surprised at the address, Bella's head popped up, her helmet smacking the wall behind her. She fumbled a shaky response and involuntarily gripped her pistol tighter. When she looked down between her knees, a faint ring of red glowed where the end of her barrel met the concrete. Giving herself a hard shake, a little clearer, she repeated, "Don't worry about me. I'm okay."

Peering around the doorframe, Edward scowled at the vehicle in the middle of the settling dust cloud before he said, "You'll be fine. Once it starts, this'll go down quick. Stay under there til we tell you to come out."

"I got two exiting," Rosalie called out as she watched two men begin to climb out of their vehicle. "They're not stupid. Using the doors and dropping low."

"Same on this side." Emmett's finger curled around the trigger as he watched three soldiers in frayed desert camo slink out of the old M998 and drop low to the ground, rifles up and ready. They weren't pros, but they knew how to move.

"Fire at–"

Before Edward even got the command out, there was the ear-splitting _rat-tat-tat_ answer of Emmett's M240. Hot brass tinkled against the floor like rain, and outside, they could hear their attackers' angry yelling.

Jasper snorted. "Don't like to wait, do ya, Sergeant?"

"Thank you, but fuck, no, I don't," the big man snapped as he fired at the ducking men again – a steady, rhythmic, sweeping barrage that blasted into the crumbling concrete walls and scattered the dirt at their feet as they ran. Two made it to the remnants of a limestone pillar, one diving headfirst, but the third was too slow. Emmett's shot ripped through his shoulder with a bloody spray, knocking him backward and sending his AK half a dozen yards away. A second shot hot on its heels and direct through the heart sent him to the ground in an unmoving heap.

As if a light switch had been thrown, gunfire suddenly erupted from all sides. From Emmett's non-stop, sweeping rounds, to Rosalie's and Edward's repeating volleys, to the sharp, individual _crack!s_ from high above on the rooftop, the noise reverberating inside Bella's small cubbyhole was deafening. Seconds seemed like hours as the responding, incoming bullets bit into the concrete walls and windowsills, sending exploding showers of pebbles and debris.

"Blondie, you see that bastard creeping around that column? At your two," Jasper yelled as he simultaneously took aim at the dark-haired gunner in the third Humvee turret directly in front of the building. The man moved just in time, and the Marine's bullet pinged off the slanted shield. In reply, the gunner sent a relentless spray of heavier rounds toward the roof, knocking chunks out of the short cement perimeter wall. "You asshole," the corporal muttered. Keeping low and on his stomach, he rolled across the flat, sun-baked roof tiles to the opposite corner. In less than a blink of an eye, he darted up, found his target, and took the second shot, not even pausing when he saw the gunner lurch backward and fall out of the turret.

"I got him," Rosalie yelled back to Jasper as she spun to the side of her window, just missing an incoming round. When she shifted to fire from behind the wall, her left shoulder wrenched with a hot bloom of pain. "Goddamnit!" she spat, glaring down at a slash of bright, wet red across her bicep.

"You alright?" Edward called over as he snapped in a second magazine. Moving to the other side of the door to assist if needed, he dropped to a knee mid-step and peppered an approaching attacker in brown-beige camouflage. Shots from the militant's rifle split the wooden door above Edward's head, but the man was down before he could re-load, three shots straight to the chest.

"Fine," Rosalie yelled as she swapped to the Benelli by her side. Pissed off more than anything, she shouldered the weapon, ignoring the stinging wound, and watched the half-wall in front of her window, patiently waiting for the movement she knew would come. The split second the thick, dirt-colored torso popped up, there was thundering boom from her shotgun, trailed by a choked scream from the man now bleeding out on the ground. With a weak, shaky arm, he lifted an old .45, popping off a wild scatter of bullets that blasted the outside wall. Unfazed, Rosalie fired again. The sidearm flew through the air, skittering across the dirt, and his screams abruptly ceased. Reloading, she said to the captain… and to the sergeant, "Em's gonna have to stitch me, though."

"I'll stitch you any day, Dollface," Emmett threw over his shoulder as he yanked out another long brass-filled belt and fed it into his rifle. When he opened fire again, he took down another militant creeping along one of the walls and hit the right thigh of the third one. The wounded man howled out a curse and then blindly pulled out a grenade from his vest. A single ringing shot from the corporal on the roof stopped him before he even touched the pull ring.

"That's six…" Edward shouted, wiping a line of heavy sweat from his forehead. "Bear-man, you and I'll slip out from the sides and sneak over toward Mr. Congo. Jazz, you and Blondie cover us and make sure he doesn't run. Take out that fuckin' driver."

Underneath the stairs, Bella sucked in a lungful of air, ignoring the heavy stench of death and hot gunpowder that pasted itself to her tongue as she heard what sounded like the end to the melee in Edward's orders. Her white-knuckled grip on her sidearm automatically loosened, and then even more when the loud, singular crack of Jasper's sniper rifle echoed off the rooftop.

There was muted, "You're clear," in her headset, followed by the rubbery scuff of Rosalie's boots as she exited the building. Absolute silence descended upon the room, the only sound being the whining rush of blood in Bella's ears. That eerie quiet could have lasted seconds or minutes, but eventually, from somewhere outside, came the garbled sounds of two men yelling – Emmett and the captain – and an equally garbled response in a language she couldn't name.

But it was over.

Muscles stiff and sore from being locked so tightly, Bella slowly stood, struggling against the weight of her armor. When she finally made it upright, her head swam and she blinked numbly against the light now pouring in through the open door and windows. Sucking in another breath, she swallowed against the rising bitter-tasting bile in her esophagus and emerged from behind the concrete column.

Right into the waiting barrel of an AK-47.

Dumbly, as if in slow motion, Bella followed the line of black metal, up a dirtied camouflage chest, to a pair of pitch black eyes set deeply into a tanned face pitted with scars and mottled by burn marks.

"Stupid Americans," the man growled in a thick, rolling accent. He stepped forward, shoving his rifle in her face, forcing her to scramble backward. Menace and violence oozed from his very pores, and there were a hundred nightmares in his eyes. As she stared into the blackness of the hollow cylindrical barrel, at that very moment, Bella's stomach dropped, and she understood – beyond all doubt – that she was going to die, never mind that this guy's comrades were all dead and that once his weapon went off, his chances of making it past the captain were nil.

As if in answer, Edward's words rumbled through Bella's skull and, stupid or not, they jerked her hand up until the red beam of her laser sight danced across the man's scarred forehead. Instead of firing, a dark, terrifying kind of amusement skittered across the man's angry features, and he chuckled. "You think you can pull that trigger, little girl?"

Hand shaking and heart pounding, Bella whispered, her voice shaky and hoarse, "Before I die, I'll find a way to shoot you first."

He grinned a wicked, yellow-toothed grin as her finger tightened on the trigger. "I don't think so. Maybe I'll just take you with me. He's looking for a new scientist since our last one was taken…"

Bella's teeth chattered before clamping down on her tongue, flooding her mouth with a rush of copper. "I swear, I will…"

Three deafening booms suddenly rocked the room, and hot, viscous _wet_ sprayed her face.

Startled, Bella's weapon went off as she stumbled backward a split second later, slamming into the concrete column behind her. The impact knocked the breath from her chest, snapping her neck forward. When she opened her eyes, all she could see was the black, unblinking eyes of the man who'd just said he was going to kill her. Shadows played across his open mouth like some kind of horror show, and in his chest were three neat and oozing red holes.

Edward slung his rifle around and crossed the room in a handful of lightning-fast strides. Ignoring the dead man on the floor – a militant that they'd somehow not accounted for – he crouched down in front of their wide-eyed, shaking scientist. Her breath came out in sharp, shallow pants, and her fingers trembled as she moved to touch the blood splatter that covered her cheeks.

Without thinking, Edward gently grabbed her wrists, wrested her sidearm away, and tucked it into the empty holster on his thigh. Reaching up, he took her face between his palms, and his thumbs automatically began wiping away the wetness – a mixture of blood, sweat, and the tears that had started to seep down her cheeks.

"Doctor?"

She didn't answer. Instead, as if dazed, she twisted her neck around to mutely stare at the bright red stains on his thumbs.

"Doc?" he said, softer, continuing to wipe away the bloody evidence.

When she still didn't answer, he tilted her face until her eyes slowly dragged up to meet his. "Bella."

At that, she flinched. A long moment passed, as if the woman were physically trying to pull herself out of the mire. It was tempting to shake her himself because time was a luxury they didn't have, but Edward waited, knowing that coherence would eventually come. She wasn't supposed to see this, not this close.

Stunned and mouth agape, Bella glanced up to find a sea of emerald green, eaten with undisguised worry. "Wha–"

"You're okay," Edward said, his voice still soft as spun silk, his warm hands still framing her face and cleaning away the blood. He gave her a faint, lopsided smile.

She swallowed, tasting salt. "I kill–

Edward shook his head. "You didn't shoot him, I did. You're fine." As if he'd just now realized what he'd been doing, his hands dropped away, and firmer when he spoke again, he told her, "I need you to stay with me for a little longer, okay? I need you to stay calm and walk outside with me."

Eyes still a little wild, Bella nodded, relieved to have a purpose and direction, and then she swiped the remaining wetness off her face with her sleeve. Before she could look down again, Edward's left hand closed around hers, and shifting to her other side – positioning himself between her and the dead man on the floor – he pulled her forward toward the door. As they made their way into the hot setting sun and across the open yard to one of the crumbling walls, without conscious direction, his other palm found the small of her back.

"She okay?" Bella heard from somewhere behind them as Edward eased her down onto the wall.

"Yeah," he said over her head. "She'll be fine."

"I'm okay," she mumbled, shaking her head to clear away the gory images that now spun a circle through her mind. "Really… it's..."

The familiar sound of plastic cracking came from beside her, and in her periphery, a bottle of water abruptly appeared and found its way inside her fist. "Drink."

Obeying, she twisted the lid the rest of the way, absently tucking it away inside her front pocket. "I just…" she started, and then stopped to take a long gulp. The water was warm, but it didn't matter because her throat was as dry as the desert around them. Bella downed another long pull, sucking down half the bottle, before closing her eyes. "Yeah, okay. _Better_."

Over her head, Jasper cocked a brow at the captain.

Edward's fist balled and his eyes narrowed into angry slits, but his voice stayed steady, carefully quiet. "One we didn't anticipate slipped through the back. Got close to her."

Jasper winced but then blinked against the sun as he put two and two together. His features screwed up, and with a wordless growl, he threw his gloves at the wall. "Fuck! What if there had been more... I was so busy with the three out front…what if… _Goddamnit__!_"

Cutting the corporal off with a single glance, never mind he wanted to throw a few things, too, Edward squatted down in front of Bella. "Stay with Jasper, okay?" he said. "He's going to stick with you til we get back to the Humvees." When she nodded – slowly, but at least she was all there – he stood up, gave the younger man another pointed look, and mouthed a silent, "Watch her."

"I will, sir."

As Edward strode away toward the two sergeants and the captive now on his knees and hunched over between them, there was purpose and, more so, a simmering anger in his every step. At their captive, at the unit, at himself, or all of the above, Jasper couldn't say.

Jerking off his helmet and letting it drop to the ground, Jasper plopped down beside their scientist and forced an easy-going smile. After a second of silence, when her expression didn't change, he bumped her shoulder. "Hey, you did good, Doc."

Surprised, both by the words and the too-light tone, a choked laugh tumbled out before she could stop it. "I didn't shoot him like you guys told me to… I freaked out. Completely," Bella mumbled after a moment, dropping her head. "He was already down when I pulled the…" She looked down at her hands, locked tight around the crinkling plastic water bottle… and still trembling. "_Shit,_ I'm still freaking out. I just… I'm sorry."

Jasper's put-on smile turned grim. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out what looked like a slim protein bar. Tearing the corner of the nondescript beige wrapper, he handed it over. "Here, you need to eat this."

Not exactly understanding, but too tired to disagree, Bella took the offered bar, peeled back the rest of the wrapper, and started to apologize again.

"Don't apologize," he said softly. The corporal bumped her shoulder again, but this time didn't pull away, letting her lean into him if she wanted. "It's normal to freak out." Staring out across the open desert, now lit in shades of orange and pink from the sun sinking below the horizon, Jasper went on, "I threw my guts up the first time I saw someone like that."

It wasn't lost on Bella that Jasper didn't specify if by _like that_, he meant that he'd seen a man dead or if he'd been the one who'd killed him. Considering the M110 with its wrapped barrel and well-worn stock that currently sat propped against the wall beside him – always at an arm's reach – she didn't have to ask.

"Yeah?" she asked as she took a bite of what tasted like cardboard.

"Definitely… And no one gave me any hell about it either, 'cause that's some rough shit even if you're trained for it." He paused. "There's nothing at all for you to be ashamed of, Doc." Shaking his head as he reached down to pick up the gloves he'd thrown, Jasper frowned. "We're the ones who screwed up, not you."

* * *

**June 12  
Back at the Humvees  
Somewhere in the Middle East**

"Name."

The man kneeling on the ground didn't respond.

Then again, as soon as Edward had taken in the milky white glass sphere that sat where his left eyeball should have been and the deep, jagged scars etched into his now-bound wrists and ringing his throat – no doubt from a long-ago tangle with a garrote – he hadn't expected any easy answers. No, this one just stared straight ahead into the cool desert night, wearing an arrogant, sneering expression few caught in Edward's crosshairs would dare.

"Name," Edward repeated, low and even, as he began to slowly circle their prisoner. Like the others they'd taken down, the fatigues worn by this one – the warlord in the scorpion-marked Humvee – were old and faded. But unlike his desert hires', his were the dark dappled greens and browns of jungle warfare, and on his left shoulder sat the torn remnant of what was once a bright blue rectangular patch. The column of yellow stars on the left-hand side still lingered.

The captain kicked the heel of the man's black combat boot, throwing him off balance when he couldn't steady himself with his hands. "_Comment t'appelles-tu?"_

The man's single functioning and jaundiced eye followed Edward as he came around. Lip curling back over dark, stained teeth, the sneer grew more pronounced. It disappeared, however, the second Edward's pistol cracked across the prisoner's pepper-colored skull. He hit the dirt with a harsh grunt, and when he glared up from his side, a thin rivulet of scarlet rolled down his temple.

Glancing to the left where Emmett stood guard, barrel aimed down at the struggling terrorist, Edward spat, "Get his ass up." Without a word, the big man grabbed the man by the armpits, hauled him to his knees, and shoved him back in front of the Humvee's headlights.

"Let's try this again, shall we? _Parles-tu anglais_?"

"_Yes_, I speak _anglais_," the man finally said, his accent heavy, long on the vowels, and imbued with an open hatred. "I am Laurent."

"First name or last?"

The sneer returned, his glass eye reflecting bright, eerie white in the unforgiving glare off the headlights. "_Colonel_ Jean-Marcel Laurent."

"Interesting," Edward mused, tapping his chin, betraying no hint of emotion or that he recognized the name. The captain did – _immediately _– just as he recalled the horrific atrocities that had been visited upon the central African populace under this man's watch. And that barely touched the damage he'd wrought while on the payroll of various terrorist cells, running from the Sudan all the way to Indonesia, since he'd _retired_.

That the former Congolese commander had tied himself to this particular cell said something serious all right. That he'd been left behind as a mere clean-up man said something far, _far _worse.

"You and I…" Edward said, allowing his gaze to slide to the pale woman slowly moving out from behind the second Humvee and toward them. When her head shot up as if she'd detected the scrutiny, he turned back to the colonel, hands on his hips. "I think we're going have _a lot _to talk about."

Laurent laughed – the loud, full-body shaking kind, laced with the colors of mania. "You think you scare me, little Marine-boy?" he said, arrogant in spite of the hard plastic binding his wrists and the black barrel pointed at his head. "I've killed hundreds… _thousands_… of little boys just like you. You think you can force my tongue?"

Bella's eyes moved from the spitting, borderline lunatic on the ground to Edward. On the surface, the Marine was a man untouched, an almost-statue seemingly unaffected by the creature of violence in front of him. A minute passed, maybe more, but then that same eager glint appeared in the captain's near-black gaze, and she swore that his lips turned up slightly at the corners. When he spoke again, his voice was as cool and serene as a high mountain lake, and all he said was a simple, "We'll see."

Nothing overt, yet had she been the man on the ground, she'd have already been screaming.

As though bored, Edward checked his watch. When he looked up, he nodded once to Emmett and Rosalie before walking out of the glow of the headlights toward the back of the Humvee where Jasper had the satellite link to El'azar set up and ready. The Israeli came on the com a second later, his accent and laugh instantly recognizable now that Bella had met him. Edward said something that made El'azar's laughter cease, however, and then the two men began a rapid-fire exchange in Hebrew, too fast and too far away for her to translate. All she caught were snippets, a word here and there, something about a location a few hours to the east.

Abandoning the two to their conversation, arms crossed tight over her chest, Bella walked across the beams of light to stand next to Rosalie, whose upper arm now sported a neatly dressed, skin-colored bandage, complete with an entirely uncharacteristic smilie face drawn in the very center that made Bella's lips twitch.

"Aren't you a pretty little morsel," the colonel purred as his single eye roamed the two women to his left. Twisting at the waist, he ogled them dead on and ran his tongue over his lips in open suggestion.

Swallowing, Bella looked away, but her feet remained planted, forcing her to stand her ground when all she really wanted to do was run.

Rosalie just rolled her bright blue eyes in irritation, as if she'd seen it all and then some. She rolled them again, this time with a derisive snort, when the man grunted and jutted his hips forward in a vulgar move that needed no explanation whatsoever.

"Look at me, whore!" he snarled. His working eye bulged and a thick vein popped out across his forehead. "In my country, women know their place. You know where this is?"

"Shut. Up. Fucker," Emmett thundered, ramming the end of his rifle into the colonel's ribs.

"Five bucks on what's coming next," the gunny sighed to Bella, shifting her shotgun from one arm to the other, as if she were sorely tempted to beat the man with it.

"On their knees, sucking my _bite_," Laurent went on, ignoring the jab in his ribs. When the only response Rosalie gave was another irritated sigh, he licked his chapped lips and sniffed the air. "_Je peux sentir ta sale chatte américaine_."

While she didn't speak French, Bella caught at least part of that. Her eyes widened and she glanced over at the taller woman beside her, fully expecting _something_. She didn't disappoint either.

Wearing an expression that screamed the old phrase _if looks could kill_, Rosalie smiled a chilling smile and flatly addressed the man in front of them. "_Va te faire encul–"_

Before she even finished, however, the colonel flew backward, landing flat on his back, blood pouring out of his nose and from a wide split in his upper lip. Without even a hint of remorse, Emmett's boot rammed into the man's side, flipping him half way over with a muffled groan. "What part of shut the fuck up did you not understand, you piece of shit?"

When he stepped away, Rosalie gazed across the lit space, one perfect brow arched high. "Thanks, babe, but I didn't really need the help."

"I know," the sergeant answered, wiping his knuckles on his pants. He winked and shot the blonde the fakest sheepish grin Bella had ever seen. "I just wanted to hit him."

"Em, load up," the captain ordered from behind the vehicle. "We need to move."

"Yes, sir." Wasting no time, Emmett yanked Laurent to his feet, roughly pushing him forward to the nearest vehicle. With another almost-playful wink at the two women, his expression abruptly hardened. The effect was startling, like two completely different men flipping back and forth in between heartbeats. When the colonel didn't move fast enough, the sergeant grabbed him by the back of his shirt, lifting him bodily, shoved him into the back of the Humvee, and yelled, "And if you open your goat-fucking mouth one more goddamned time, I will beat the shit out of you, you got that? And you don't fucking look at them again."

Recoiling, Bella turned away to stare at the endless dark beyond the Humvees. A hard, fleshy _thwack!_ made her eyes squeeze shut. When they opened again, a long, lean shadow stood beside hers. "Do I want to know?" Edward asked Rosalie.

Climbing into the driver's seat, the gunnery sergeant just shrugged. "Already taken care of."

The heavy door clicked shut, but with the windows cracked open, Bella could still make out what was going on inside the cabin. Through the glass, Emmett pointed at them, and pitched low with a kind of calculated menace that had her hair standing on end, Bella heard the sergeant say, "Do you see that Marine standing there?"

Without permission, Bella's eyes flitted to her left, to the frighteningly cold, distant man in MARPAT.

"Do you know who he is?" the big man went on, pushing the colonel, eating into his mental space just like the captain had commanded.

There was a long pause. So soft that Bella almost missed it, Emmett finally said, "They call him the Ghost… I bet you've heard that name before, haven't you?"

Another weighted second of silence followed, and then, "Yeah, I thought so…

"So you can guess who we are." Almost on cue, the Humvee's big block engine rumbled to life. "We're your worst fucking nightmare, _Colonel_ Jean-Marcel Laurent, _Butcher_ of Kivu." Bella's spine went ramrod straight.

"That man standing out there?" Emmett pointed at Edward again. "He's going to _break_ you. You know that, right? He's going to rip you apart until there's nothing left and you're fuckin' begging for a bullet. And then you're going to tell us everything we want to know."

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes: **Thank you so much for reading. I really appreciate all of you who take the chance in following WIPs (makes it way more fun for me to have you reading along as we go), and I really do love hearing from you – good, bad, and everything in between.

* * *

**French:**

_Comment t'appelles-tu_** – **what's your name?

_Parles-tu anglais – _do you speak English?

_Bite – _cock

_Je peux sentir ta sale chatte américaine_ – I can smell your filthy, American cunt.

_Va te faire enculer_ – approximately, go fuck yourself.

* * *

**Glossary:**

_Democratic Republic of the Congo _– previously Zaire, is a country located in central Africa, bordering the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Angola, Zambia, and the Republic of the Congo. Due to its chaotic politics, corruption, and its near constant state of warfare over the last couple of decades, both civil and with its neighbors, it's recognized as being one of the (if not _the_) most violent places in the world, especially in the eastern Kivu region near Rwanda. There, cannibalism has been seen as late as 2003, and rape and sodomy are considered to be a weapons of war used by its military, used extensively against women and men. French is the official language.

_Laser sight_ – nifty little devices that one can attach to all varieties of weaponry using bottom or top-mounted rails. Coming mostly in red, but occasionally in the green wavelength band, they act as visible aiming guides for the shooter, enabling higher accuracy. Note: they aren't much use in high light conditions, however.

_M998_ – one of the versions of HMMWVs, which lacks a lot of the armor you find on newer versions/armor kits.

_MG3_ – is a general purpose belt-fed machine gun originally manufactured by Rheinmetall, now licensed to various manufacturers. It fires a 7.62x51 mm NATO round.

_Revolutionary Guard_ – or Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, or the IRGC, is the military branch of Iran charged with protecting the country's Islamic system, including the prevention of military uprisings and internal dissent. It controls the _Basij_, which is a very large paramilitary volunteer force. The IRGC holds a great deal of power in Iran, and in recent years, it has been accused of various controversial activities by outside parties, including election rigging, as well as training Hamas and Hezbollah fighters.

_RPG_ – or Rocket Propelled Grenade, is an anti-vehicle rocket/warhead combination that is usually fired from a shoulder-fired launcher. Warheads come in several varieties, including high explosive (HE), anti-tank (HEAT), thermobaric, etc.


	7. Chapter 7

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale** are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**June 13  
Abandoned Military Outpost  
Somewhere Deep in the Northern Zagros Mountains Along the Border Between Iran and Iraq**

"Hey Doc! Breakfast or dinner?"

Startled, Bella's eyes shot up from the short stack of crinkled papers on her lap and flew across the small encampment to the man standing by the open door of the closest Humvee.

Against the sepia-tinted backdrop of the high, arid mountains all around them, the staff sergeant cut an imposing figure, even in an old olive drab tee a size too small and without the armor. He was a tank of a man, a wall of hard muscle with not a hint of fat. No longer hidden beneath the uniform blouse, he sported a pair of tree trunk sized biceps, too, decorated by twin, curling lines of jet-black ink, and there was no doubt whatsoever that they'd pack a wallop. Recalling the scene from late last night, it was a wonder that the colonel had even been able to walk to the Humvee when they'd loaded up.

Then again, Bella thought, the colonel _hadn't _walked _out_ of the vehicle once they'd finally stopped here. No, he'd been _dragged_ by his collar, cursing, spitting, and bleeding, and then he and the captain had disappeared into the small, concrete munitions bunker buried in the side of the mountain behind them. It was a moment that Bella's mind had replayed over and over in a constant, nonstop loop over the last eight hours, no matter how much she tried to concentrate on Riley's papers.

"_Don't open this door," the captain said to the sergeants as he handed his rifle to Rosalie. _

_The gunny frowned, but didn't argue as she took his weapon. _

_With quick, focused movements that betrayed no sign of nerves, Edward shucked his vest and helmet before stripping down to a worn, plain beige tee. He kept only one of the sand-colored .45s strapped to his thighs. That, and a matte black, razor-sharp ka-bar that he tucked into his belt. _

_When Edward's eyes, dark, distant, and as cold as ice, landed on Bella, his fist tightened around the iron doorknob. He glanced over his shoulder into the dimly lit bunker before returning his gaze to Bella, and then he addressed his sergeants one last time. "And don't you dare let her anywhere near here. That's an order."_

Despite the oven-like heat from the midday sun, Bella shivered. She knew well enough what was going on behind that heavy door, just as she understood the urgency and necessity of it. The only surprise was just how quiet they'd been, and _that_ was its own chilling kind of testament to the captain's skill.

"Doc?" Emmett asked again, peering over a pair of mirrored Oakleys. He waved his hands, both of which held identical light brown pouches with darker lettering repeating across the front.

"What?" About the time Bella looked back to the sergeant, she swore she heard a muffled thump, followed by a low, pained noise that set her teeth on edge. Her spine snapped straight, and she froze for a split second, stock-still, battling the urge to spin toward the same bunker she'd been trying so hard to push out of her mind. Giving herself another hard shake, Bella cleared her throat to buy some time before quietly speaking. "I'm sorry. What was that?"

Emmett shot her a grin and barked a laugh, but Bella wasn't fooled. He'd heard it, too, and there was no hiding the ripple of tension across those bunched-up shoulders, nor the way his eyes automatically lifted to scan the canyon walls. "Whatcha want?" he said after a moment, flipping one of the bags in the air. "Muffin and sausage or beef roast?"

Bella blinked. "Um, I'm not re–"

"She wants the roast."

Without warning, in a blur of tan and black, Alice vaulted over the thick concrete block – a two-foot high, crumbling remnant of an old foundation – at Bella's back. With surprising grace, she twirled around, dropped down to the ground, crossing her legs like a kid, and leaned in. "Trust me," she whispered to Bella behind her palm. "It comes with cookies _and_ cobbler. It's absolutely impossible to fuck up cobbler. Sausage, on the other hand…" The lieutenant's face screwed up and she gave an involuntary shudder. She called over to Emmett. "Beef. B definitely wants the beef."

"Fine," he grumbled back before turning to dig through a cardboard box on the Humvee's floorboard. "More sausage for me!"

Bella's brows knitted together. "I'm really not hungry." Nauseated, maybe. Exhausted, _definitely._

"Yes, you are," Jasper cut in as he swung his boots over another bench-sized hunk of concrete across from them. Like the other Marines, the corporal was armorless, supposedly at ease. The desert-colored M110 still hanging in its sling across his chest, ready at a moment's notice, however, said that _at ease_ was a relative term, at least out here. "Your system's shot right now from lack of sleep and shock. Your brain hasn't had a chance to catch up yet."

"I don't kno–"

"Eat. At least try. Captain'll be pissed if you pass out." As he tore into his own MRE, Jasper flashed her a quick smile – one that widened when he took in the helo pilot beside her as she attempted to pin back her helmet-mangled hair with some kind of dark barrette. "Plus, if you don't finish it, I'm sure Tink will take the cookies…" That smile turned into a mischievous smirk. "_And_ the cobbler."

"Hey!"

Slate eyes twinkling, Jasper snorted. "It's true, and you know it. For being as little as you are, you eat like a damned horse."

"Whatever." Alice rolled her eyes with an exaggerated huff and then yelled over to Emmett, "Do we have any chicken left?"

The sergeant's reply was unintelligible – something about picky eaters and not getting paid enough – but no more than a second later, another brown pouch sailed over Jasper's head and landed in her lap.

"Fuck," Alice muttered under her breath, grimacing when she picked the pouch up and read the label. Her nose scrunched up. "I didn't mean _this_ chicken." She held the thing up as if Bella actually knew what she meant. "I mean, who the hell wants dried fruit for dessert? Fruit. Freakin' _fruit!_"

"Here." Half-laughing and half-sighing, Jasper shook his head, grabbed one of the small tan packets he'd set out beside him, and tossed it over. "Better now?"

As soon as she flipped the packet over and saw its contents, Alice's eyes widened and she pumped a triumphant fist, displaying a level of energy that no one had any business having after thirty-six hours with no sleep. "_Yes!_ You're the best, Jazzy…" Chucking the dreaded dried fruit across the way in exchange, she blew Jasper a loud, squawky kiss, and then threw a narrow-eyed glare at the sergeant. "Unlike some other people I know. _Ahem._"

Chuckling, the big man flipped her off as he climbed over Jasper's makeshift bench – dinners in hand – and settled down beside him. When Bella peeked over to the corporal, now suspiciously engrossed in the open ration on his lap, a faint dusting of pink climbed his neck and cheeks.

Emmett motioned to Bella. "These'll be ready in ten minutes or so."

"Thanks… I think." Bella nodded, watching the younger man fiddle with some kind of pale green foldout pack before placing it back in the pouch. He tilted the entire thing, propping it against a rock, and poured in water from his canteen. A minute or two later, he dropped in the entrée.

"They're better than you're thinking," Alice said as she began copying the corporal's procedure. "Seriously. It's not like what you're thinking. Kind of like…" Pausing, she tapped her bottom lip. "Think frozen dinner, or Chef Boy-ar-dee."

Jasper's head popped up. "Oh, fuck that. They're exactly as bad as you're thinking." When Emmett opened his mouth to argue, Jasper elbowed the bigger man in the ribs, earning him a hard shove in retaliation. "And God almighty, don't ever let _this guy_," Jasper added, snickering as he dodged a second shove – this one aimed to take him off the bench, "talk you into the chili macaroni. That shit'll go down like a bri–"

Before the corporal could finish his thought, another muted thud came from behind them, this time louder. Then came another. And another, each one punctuated by a low, keening wail that made Bella's hair stand on end. Unable to stop herself, heart slamming against her sternum, Bella spun around, shot to her knees, and stared over the pitted concrete at the heavy, unmoving door that led inside the mountain. Half-covered by reedy, desert grasses and gray-green shrubs and painted to match the dirt-colored boulders that framed it, the bunker was an easy thing to miss. But now, it was all she could see.

"Doc?" Jasper said softly.

"How… how much longer?" she whispered, no longer capable of playing their well-meant charades.

From her left, gravel crunched under a boot. "As long as it takes." Rosalie's voice was hard and pitiless, cut from the same granite as the captain, but when Bella's gaze slowly slid up to meet hers, there was undisguised worry – and _something else_ that she didn't recognize – lurking in the stiff brace of the gunny's jaw. "And when it's done," Rosalie went on with an angry growl, shifting her rifle. "You _will not_ give him any shit. You got that?"

"What?" Bella's lips mashed together and her forehead creased. Out of habit, her thumbnail flew to her mouth. "_No_… Of course not." She flinched, and the nail tore down to the quick. Muttering a low curse, Bella thrust her balled up, stinging fist into her pocket, and then she asked, musing more to herself than anyone, "How could I?"

In a handful of quick, clipped strides, Rosalie moved to a wide, blackened stump that sat between the crumbled foundation and the mountain. Her gear hit the ground with a quiet _thunk_, and she sat without looking, her ice-blue eyes boring into Bella instead. After a second, one sculpted brow cocked high. "I don't know, Doctor. You tell me."

Unsure where to look – at the door, at the sergeant, or at the ground – Bella's frown deepened. "I mean," she started, and then stopped, waving a hand as though the answer were perfectly obvious. "Look at what _I_ do. What I've created. You think I have any room to talk?" Louder, firmer, and borderline pissed off, Bella said, "These… people… these goddamned _terrorists,_ who kidnapped my best friend, who fucking _tortured_ him to death to make him give them a weapon that could kill millions… We _have_ to stop them. There is no alternative, and nothing else matters right now. How could you even _think _I'd…"

The gunny's other brow shot to her hairline, and for few tense seconds, both women were absolutely silent. When Rosalie finally broke the standoff, studying their scientist like some kind of rare zoo creature, the hardness in her voice vanished. In its place was a distant, hollow kind of quality that made Bella's stomach twist into a tight knot. "Good." Behind that single word was another statement – an unspoken handshake. "Edward doesn't need that bullshit." Rosalie slowly shook her head. "It's hard enough on him, as is."

For a long, quiet moment, no one else spoke, as if there were nothing more to say. Wordlessly, Emmett passed across what was supposed to be some kind of beef roast, steaming and complete with vegetables and bread, and then there was only the rattling of paper and spoons. Nowhere close to hungry, Bella picked at her food and stared at the craggy, snow-capped mountains to the north.

Less than half an hour later, those sounds started up again – the same blend of eerily quiet thumps and human misery. But this time, she didn't turn. Instead, Bella gritted her teeth and fought the involuntary tremor. Sucking in a slow, deep breath, she surveyed the captain's team before offering a nervous smile. "How long have you guys been together?"

Spoon halting, Emmett glanced up at the pale, dark-haired woman who still had no business being here, but who had unknowingly earned the respect and approval of one of the harshest critics he knew, not to mention the rest of them. No one – _no one_ – caught Rosalie Hale off guard. Yet this woman had managed to, and there was no denying that the doctor had some iron in her veins after all. He figured that she deserved a few answers. "'Cept Jazz, of course… since '07."

_Six years_, Bella counted. "That's a long time, isn't it?" Her head tilted. "How does that work? Were you assigned?"

Alice piped in before he could speak, but like the sergeant's, her normally cheerful tone was strangely subdued. Distant, maybe, almost… _careful_. "No, we requested it. We asked to be placed under the Captain's command."

"Why?"

Suddenly intent, Jasper leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "The Captain… he's… kind of a big deal in the Corps." Alice gave a quiet snort. "What? It's the damned truth, and you know it," he argued, ignoring her when she sighed. "See, when I was in Scout Sniper Basic, he was like the _standard_." Jasper's gray eyes flitted to the long rifle propped up beside him. "No one could do what he did. No one could come close to his scores, on range or in fieldcraft."

Bella's vision swam with the image of those three, perfectly grouped holes, placed dead center in her assailant's chest. "So he was a sniper then?"

Rosalie shook her head. "Not in the typical sense."

"What do you mean?"

"Back then, the Captain was leading a different Recon unit, kind of like this one, but mostly Green Ops." When Bella started to ask, Rosalie explained, "Deep surveillance, and in his case, real deep. Out for months at a time and in some of the scariest motherfuckin' places you've ever seen. Considering it was 2007, you can guess who he was looking for." She spat and flicked her empty MRE packet on top of the small pile that they'd started in the center. "Most snipers aren't officers, but he _chose _to take the course because he was smart. And he was still the best."

Another beat of silence passed before Emmett asked, "You know what our motto is?"

"Um, I think everyone does. _Semper Fidelis_." Always faithful. And judging from the Marines Bella knew, it was more than a just a phrase. It ran bone deep.

One corner of his mouth curved up. "That's right, but I mean ours specifically. Force Recon's." When Bella replied that she didn't, the big man yanked up his left sleeve, popping a few threads as it stretched.

Positioned above the ink she'd glimpsed before, the tattoo was as big around as both of Emmett's fists, a wicked-looking skull with blacked out sockets and a mouth covered by some kind of gas or air mask. A pair of angel wings, detailed down to each single feather, spread out behind it, and in a carefully scripted semi-circular arc below, read a single phrase, "_Celer, Silens, Mortalis."_

"My Latin's crap." Bella studied the lines, turning them over in her head like they were any other puzzle meant to be solved. Latin was Riley's thing, she remembered. "Quick… No, wait, it's swift… Swift, Silent, and… Deadly?"

"That's why they call him The Ghost, you know. Because he's exactly that – fast, silent, and absolutely lethal," Rosalie said, watching the scientist's eyes widen in understanding. "You're dead before you even know he's there." Leaning forward on her knees, mimicking Jasper's tired pose, she scrubbed the grit off her face. "And there's no telling how many lives he's saved because of it. He's _everything_ a Marine should be. That's why we requested this team."

"So–"

"It was a special operation conducted in '07," Alice answered before Bella could ask. "A joint forces kind of thing... It involved Edward, specifically. Blondie's and Emmett's units were involved. And I got called in from Bagram to provide air support. Back then, I was flying F-16s with the 455th." The lieutenant picked through the leftover chunks of chicken in her pouch, took a reluctant bite, and forced a smile. "Afterward… when it was all finally over, well, we kind of stuck together."

The gunnery sergeant's comments finally clicked. "He saved you. I understand."

Alice froze mid-bite. Because even now when she closed her eyes at night, she still heard the panicked scream come through her headset, still heard Emmett's responding words, soft and surprisingly gentle, and she definitely still saw the blazing hot, smoking inferno left behind after she'd emptied her entire payload and razed that godforsaken cave deep in the middle of the White Mountains in retribution.

"Not exactly." Although he'd saved all their asses plenty of times since then. '07 was something else altogether, so Alice just shrugged. "But, yeah, it was something like that."

With an exaggerated cough, Emmett popped up and motioned for Bella to hand over her barely touched ration. When she obeyed, he scowled at the weight of it and muttered, "Not acceptable, Doc." Reaching into his pocket, he produced a slim, coffee-colored bar just like the one Jasper had her eat last night, and tossed it. "Humor me." As he stepped around the bench, he pushed his shades to the top of his head and pointed at Rosalie. "And _you_, get your ass over here. Lemme look at that arm."

Rosalie balked and threw a wadded-up piece of cardboard, hitting him square in the chest. "I don't think so, _Staff_ _Sergeant_."

But the big man wasn't having any of it and threw it right back. "I'm the fucking medic here. What I say goes. And I don't care if you bat your pretty blue eyes or kick me in the balls, I'm checking your goddamned arm." He thumbed toward the Humvee. "Now get over there." He winked. "_Ma'am._"

"I'll show you kick," Rosalie grumbled. Nonetheless, she complied and followed him over to the vehicle, and then Bella stared in rapt fascination as the two sergeants argued back and forth, nonstop, while Emmett carefully – and _gently_ – re-dressed Rosalie's wound. Once he was done, signing his work with another smilie, Emmett yanked on her ponytail, laughing when Rosalie punched him in the gut hard enough that most other men would have hit the ground.

Bella leaned over to Alice. "They're sleeping together, aren't they?"

The lieutenant's eyes boggled and then she threw her head back, bursting into a fit of girlish giggles.

Bella bit back a laugh. "I take that as a yes."

Wiping her cheeks, Alice scooted over until they were shoulder to shoulder and whispered back, "Just don't tell Edward, okay?"

"That's not allowed?"

Alice's gaze darted away for a split second. "_Ehhh…_ it's allowed but not really encouraged. We'll put it like that."

Fingering the edge of the energy bar she had no desire to eat, Bella hesitated just long enough for her lips to kick up at the corners. "So, then I take it he doesn't know about you and…" Her eyes cut over to the corporal, who now sat sideways on the bench, using it as a table as he broke down and checked his rifle. "_That guy_."

This time, instead of laughing, Alice choked, wide-eyed and sputtering. "_No!_" she hissed through clenched teeth, grabbing Bella by the collar to draw her closer. "We're not even… together-together. We just… went out that one time." When Bella rolled her eyes, Alice winced and smacked her lips. "Okay, twice."

Satisfied, Bella leaned back against the concrete and smiled up at the bright blue sky, almost forgetting where they were and why.

"Swear."

Bella looked to her right. "Swear what?"

A sharp jab in her shoulder answered. "Don't be dense. I get enough of that from these assholes."

"Fine. I swear," Bella sighed as she closed her eyes for the first time since they'd left Israel. The daytime sun was blazing hot as it seeped through her clothes and skin, but here in the mountains, so high up in elevation, there was a light, constant breeze coming from the north that carried with it the scent of sweet almonds and figs as well as a hint of cooler air. The combined effect was as good as any tranquilizer, and it only took a handful of deeper breaths to lull her to sleep.

But all that was gone with the loud, sudden _crack!_ of a .45.

With a wheezy scream, Bella jolted upright, banging her skull against the concrete. Blood as cold as ice, she scrambled to her feet a split-second later, grabbing for the pistol on her thigh that was no longer there. But there were four others already up and facing the bunker, weapons at the ready.

Stalking quietly to the left, Jasper chambered a round. "Gunny?"

Rosalie's palm shot up, and then she motioned Emmett to take position opposite Jasper. Rifle tucked tight against her shoulder, knees bent and low, she edged toward the door leading into the mountain. "Captain?" she called.

No one responded for a too-long, hair-raising moment.

"Captain?" she called again, louder.

Muffled by the thick walls and heavy door, Edward finally answered. "Stand down, Sergeant. It's fine." And then, as if in slow motion, there was the metallic click of the lock, and the door to the bunker slowly swung wide, its rusty hinges squealing with every inch.

Framed by darkness, the captain looked as though he'd been to hell and back. The beige shirt he wore inside was now plastered to his skin, wet from sweat, not to mention from multiple sprays of something _darker_. The same crimson-brown shade stained his pants, too, in a foot-long, thick to light stripe. It took Bella only a second to grasp from where it'd come. Edward turned to say something to Rosalie, and the black handle of his ka-bar was all the reminder she needed. When he wiped his face, his knuckles were split, bruised, and bleeding.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

The normal, straight line of the captain's shoulders slumped as though he were the one who'd been beaten. His features were slack, devoid of any emotion, and those glittering, gem-colored irises of his were as black as night and flat, with dark, plum-gray bruises in their hollows.

"Rose," Edward said. He rammed his fingers through sweat-wet hair to push it off his forehead, and Bella realized that there was blood on his face, too. Like his expression, his tone was flat and lifeless, speaking of untold horror. "I need you to call El'azar. Tell him we're on our way."

"Yes, sir."

"And then call Quantico. We're going to need a pick up. And find out if we've got any carriers near the Red Sea."

Rosalie gave him a quick, clipped nod, and started off toward the vehicles.

"Where we heading, sir?" Jasper asked.

Sluggish, Edward's head swung around. When his eyes landed on Bella, he grimaced and quickly looked away. "Em's favorite," he finally said.

"Son of a bitch," the sergeant muttered, crossing his arms over his massive chest. The muscles in the sergeant's forearms rolled and flexed like steel cables. "Where specifically?"

"Few hundred miles north of Mogadishu." Edward scratched his chin, seeing the wide, flat, barren plateaus they'd raced across only last year. "They've got a pretty decent camp set up in a dried-out watercourse between a couple of the higher plateaus."

"That it?"

"No, it's heavily fortified, and there are some sophisticated buildings in the center, mostly running off of industrial generators. I'm assuming that's mostly for the labs and for building the weapons." Edward's jaw ticked. "With all the political chaos going on, you know as well as I do that it's the perfect spot to hide. And God knows, there's no shortage of hired guns. They've supposedly amassed at least a few hundred, maybe more."

Emmett made an angry, frustrated sound and spat. "Which makes it a fucking nightmare for us."

"Pretty much." Edward looked back to the corporal. "I'll give you what details I have. Call those CIA agents and have 'em swing the satellites around. We're going nowhere until I see exactly what and who we're looking at."

"You got it." The corporal hesitated, taking in his commander from head to toe, before quietly asking, "Did the colonel tell you anything else?"

Edward didn't reply at first, and instead, pushed his hand through his hair again. His fist balled, stretching the lacerations across his knuckles until they burned like fire. "They're from out of Europe somewhere. Laurent never met the guy funding it all, but the ones he worked through all spoke English. Said the accents were from all over – Eastern Europe somewhere, British, German – but they were all distinctly European."

Bella stepped forward. "Did he know who kidnapped Riley?"

"No." He shook his head. "But he did confirm what we suspected… they're not looking to sell your weapon, Dr. Swan."

Her heart stopped. "They're going to use it."

"Yeah, looks that way. Potential targets are all U.S. cities with more than a million people. " Edward took a slow deep breath. When he breathed out, his shoulders sagged and he scrubbed his face, pushing the heels of his palms against his eyes until they ached and red and green spots floated in the blackness. Abruptly, he dropped his hands to his hips, looked to the right where a narrow, washed-out dirt road curved around a sheer rock wall in the distance, and said to his team, "I'll be back in a few minutes. Get everything ready."

"Edward?"

"It's fine, Al," he said, waving Alice off when she moved toward him. Without waiting for her response, the captain rocked forward and started walking. Twenty yards away, he stopped mid-stride, straightened, spun toward the bunker, and looked to the staff sergeant. "And douse that shit, will ya? Burn it all."

As soon as Edward turned, the other Marines immediately began to move, grabbing and packing their gear with the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. Too stunned to move, Bella just stood there, lips parted and heart fully in her throat, staring at the way the captain's head dropped and the way his fists slowly flexed by his sides as he slowly made his way around the corner. His boots crunched quietly over the pebbles and rocks, his steps dragging, lacking his usual purpose.

The second he disappeared, Bella's spine straightened and words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. "Jasper, do you have a shirt?"

The corporal peeked out from the back of the Humvee. "Huh? Why?"

"Give it to me."

Emmett placed a gentle hand on Bella's shoulder. "Leave him alone, Doc."

Bella glared at the bigger man, and when he didn't budge, instead curling his fingers tighter, she lost it and yelled, "I didn't ask for your permission!" Twisting away, Bella scooped up a bottle of water she hadn't touched and squatted to go through her gear, digging deep through the largest pouch until her fingers found the small green kit. When she stood, shoving it into the big cargo pocket at her knee, Jasper pitched her a rolled-up olive drab t-shirt.

"Thanks," she muttered and then turned, ignoring Emmett's wide-eyed protests. From behind them, Alice snapped at the sergeant. He growled something back, but once the lieutenant spoke again, his arguing ceased.

Arms full, Bella jogged the fifty yards to where the road cut around the rock, jumping across the deep tracks washed out by the rare heavy rains, trying to catch up. As soon as she turned the corner, however, her lips fell open as she skidded to a halt and froze.

And silently waited.

Bent in half at the waist, one hand on his knee, the other splayed against a granite boulder for support, Edward spat the last of whatever was left in his stomach. He was sore and exhausted – physically, but more so mentally. Regardless, repeating the colonel's terrifying words in his head, he only allowed himself the luxury of staying like that for a couple of seconds before he straightened.

Back still facing her – unknowingly displaying every single line of every muscle as they bunched and stretched beneath his wet shirt – Edward quickly wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and exhaled a tired sigh. "What do you need, Doctor?"

She didn't answer, forcing him to turn around. But when he did, the woman still didn't speak. Her slender throat bobbed as she scanned the entire length of him, wearing an expression he couldn't decipher. Finding what in his, he didn't know, she held out an unopened bottle of water and a t-shirt.

Unprepared for both her appearance and her offering, Edward's lips turned down, but he took the shirt with a weary nod, setting it down on the boulder beside him. Grabbing the hem of the one he wore, he hesitated as he debated whether or not to turn his back, but then, cursing himself for even deliberating, Edward yanked the filthy fabric over his head, letting it drop into wet pile on the ground.

Like Emmett, Edward sported the intricately inked stamp of his battalion on his shoulder, and there was another equally well-crafted design covering the right side of his chest – this one the more common Eagle, Globe, and Anchor – but Bella couldn't see any of that.

A long, jagged scar ran the diagonal length of the captain's torso, all the way from the top of his left shoulder to his right side where it trailed along the seam of a lean, cut abdominal muscle until it slipped behind the low waistband of his pants. It was old and pale against the warm tan of the rest of his skin, but from the width of it and the way the rough line had healed, indenting slightly below the surface, Bella knew the wound had been a deep one, severe enough that it would have killed a lesser man. Other, smaller scars – irregular, dime to quarter-sized holes from shrapnel and God only knew what else – littered his left side. And that was only the ones that she could see.

She blinked when Edward suddenly reached between them to take the water, unscrewing the cap only to dump half its contents over his head. As he mopped his face and neck, washing away the grit and grime, Bella eased back against one of the waist-high rocks that lined the road, arms wrapped tightly around her, and alternated between staring down at the ground and out across the wide, open canyon in front of them. Out here in the middle of nowhere, tucked inside the rocky mountains, there wasn't even a hint of human habitation. The view, which spanned miles on end in every direction, was something out of a dream, arid, wild, and a hundred shades of brown, yet still somehow beautiful in its harshness.

Pulling on the fresh shirt – Jasper's, obviously – Edward approached the scientist and followed her lead, leaning against the rock beside her. White as a sheet, eyes wide and unnecessarily wet, but with a stubborn brace of her jaw that defied definition, she was something else – something foreign – and at the moment, not at all unwelcome. Fact of the matter was, that she'd come after him, whatever her reasons were for doing it, made something tick inside his chest. And when the woman whipped an energy bar out of her pocket, shoved it into his hand, and told him to, "_Eat,_" in a tone of voice that belonged more to Rosalie than to a soft civilian, Edward's lips twitched.

"Thanks," he said, quiet enough that she almost missed it, and started to peel back the wrapper. When Bella's face pinched for no particular reason, Edward angled himself toward her without thinking, took a bite, and simultaneously raised a questioning brow. "What?"

She chewed the inside of her cheek. "Let me see your hand."

An unexpected laugh made it off his tongue before he realized that she was serious. But when she cut him an irritated glare, he didn't argue. He switched the energy bar over to his left and placed his right banged-up, calloused hand in her smooth, soft one to humor her. Turning his hand over, Bella inspected the splits and bruises, making a _tsk_ing noise when the skin stretched and started to bleed again.

"It's fine."

She didn't respond, other than to reach down to her knee to retrieve her IFAK. As she pulled out the iodine and antibiotic, however, Edward tugged on his hand, which netted him nothing except another annoyed scowl and a huff. "Will you stop?" she muttered. "Don't be stupid."

"It's nothing, Doc," he told her as she began carefully dabbing the rust-colored liquid across his cuts. "Seriously. I've had _a lot_ worse than a few bruised knuckles."

Staring down at his hand rather than up at him, Bella's glare disappeared, softening her too-pretty, too-fine face. "I know you have," was all she said, at least until she'd finished her work. She was quick about it, too, and almost as neat as Emmett as she ended it with the antibiotic, which made Edward wonder just how she'd come about her knowledge. Setting the kit on the other side of the rock, Bella dropped her eyes to their feet before offering a hushed, "I'm sorry."

Edward stiffened.

"That you had to do that, I mean."

Sucking in a ragged breath, Edward shifted more of his weight against the rock, pocketed the other half of the bar, and palmed the back of his neck. He waited for a moment, torn between arguing and ignoring her, finally settling on a quiet, tired, "Yeah, me too."

Bella's face turned up and she looked him in the eye. "Do you think he was lying?"

Edward's skin pulled tight across his cheekbones. "No." He shook his head, and then again more firmly. "He wasn't lying."

"How can you know?"

"Trust me, I know."

There was something almost sad in the way the captain said the words, conveying a pained conviction and surety that made Bella's heart sink in realization when she pieced them together with the evidence carved into his skin.

"Someone did that to you." It was a statement, not a question.

Slowly, not looking away, Edward nodded, which had the effect of an ice-cold bucket of water over the head. "You could say that I have a unique perspective, a kind of knowledge that most interrogators don't," he explained after a moment. His Adam's apple dipped. "I know what works and what doesn't." Bella didn't speak, but instead squeezed the hand Edward had almost forgotten that she still held.

"Some people…" he went on, not pulling away. "They're not afraid of dying. Or prison. Or whatever. You can't reason with them and you can't threaten them with that shit. I know, I've seen it. I've lived it." His thumb stroked the back of her hand. "But there is one thing that everyone's afraid of…" The hand that wasn't in hers stole to his side, tracing the phantom ache along his scar. "_Pain_. It's just a question of how much they can tolerate before breaking."

Bella's stomach flipped and her mouth went dry. "I hate that you had to… do what you did," she said after a second, cringing at her own words. "But I'm relieved that we have a lead… that we know where to go."

The image of Laurent suddenly came unbidden, on his knees in front of the Humvee's headlights, spitting, leering, and mocking them with his vile, sick words. _The_ _Butcher of Kivu_, Emmett had called him. A terrorist, a rapist, a murderer of thousands of innocents by his own admission. "And I'm glad he's dead… that you killed him," Bella whispered. "Maybe I shouldn't be, maybe it's wrong to think that way, but I am."

Edward shrugged. "It is what it is."

"Will you tell me about what happened to you?"

"Yeah." His fingers tightened around hers. "One day, I will."

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes:  
**

Last chapter, someone asked a great question about the Revolutionary Guards versus Republican Guards. See below for an explanation.

I've also had a couple of people ask me about USMC rank structure. I included that below as well.

* * *

**Glossary:**

_455__th_– or the 455th Expeditionary Wing, or 455th AEW, is one of the U. S. Air Force AEWs assigned to Afghanistan, specifically Bagram Airfield. Their job has been mainly to provide air support to troops on the ground.

_Artesh_ – or the Islamic Republic of Iran Army.

When you hear the term "Republican Guards" in reference to the Middle East, generally it means the Republican Guard of Iraq. If it's in reference to Iran, it's likely either someone misnaming the Revolutionary Guards or, perhaps, that person means the _Artesh_.

There are three main military "branches" or divisions in Iran: 1) the Islamic Republic of Iran armed forces, which includes the Army (_Artesh_), Navy, Air Force, and Air Defense Force, 2) the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (Revolutionary Guards), and 3) the volunteer force, the _Basij_.

The regular Iranian armed forces are like any other country's military and they protect Iran's political borders. The Revolutionary Guards, however, are charged with protecting Iran's Islamic system. It includes the Quds Force, which is a special forces unit that operates outside of Iran. Some consider the Quds Force to be a terrorist organization. The third division, the _Basij,_ is a large paramilitary volunteer force, which is loosely organized under local clerics and ultimately takes its orders from the Revolutionary Guards. It essentially acts as a kind of moral police.

_Bagram_ – refers to Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, which is one of the largest U.S. military bases in the country.

_Eagle, Globe, and Anchor_ – refers to the official USMC logo, which depicts a globe with a diagonally oriented anchor behind it. An eagle sits on top, wings spread and holding a streaming ribbon in its beak. The ribbon reads, "Semper Fidelis". Note: the other tattoo that Emmett and Edward both sport isn't an "official" logo of any active battalion, but it is one that some Force Recon Marines have. I borrowed it for my fictional battalion.

_Fieldcraft_ – is a military term referring to the skill of moving and operating in stealth, including knowledge and expertise in the various methods to do so (e.g., countersurveillance, camouflage, tracking, outdoor survival skills, etc.)

_ka-bar_ – refers to the standard issue Marine combat knife, named for its original manufacturer, KA-BAR Cutlery Co. They have a Bowie blade, are typically 7 in., have a leather pommel, and are often painted matte black.

_MRE_ – or Meal, Ready-to-Eat, is a standard field ration in the U.S. military. Coming in a variety of menu options, they typically contain an entrée, a side, a bread or starch, dessert(s), a beverage, and accessories, averaging around 1300 calories per meal. A flameless heater is also included in each pouch. They have a shelf life of at least 3 years. _[note from Scooterstale: mmm…sounds delicious]_

_Payload – _for fighter jets, refers the weight of the weapons and fuel cargo. Above, Alice is referring to the bombs she dropped. F-16s usually carry two 2000 lb bombs, two AIM-9, and two AIM-120 missiles. F-16s are also often equipped with up to sixteen additional missiles, which are distributed across the wings, and a heavy round machine gun in front.

_Rank_ – in the Marines, rank structure is divided into three categories: 1) Commissioned Officers, 2) Warrant Officers, and 3) Enlisted. This story doesn't really include any Warrant Officers, so I'll just break down Commissioned Officers and Enlisted.

Commissioned Officers (lowest to highest): Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant (Alice), Captain (Edward), Major, Lt. Colonel, Colonel, and then four levels of General (Carlisle is a Lieutenant General, which makes him second from the very top). The President formally commissions these officers, and they almost always come out of 4-yr. military academies or ROTC programs. They're typically placed in formal leadership positions over groups of Enlisted.

Note on Alice: sometimes when an officer changes branches, the normal rank progression can be delayed due to additional training needs. Hence she's still a First Lieutenant instead of a Captain. You can assume that while Alice is a little younger than Edward (he's around 33, btw), they're fairly close in age.

Enlisted: Private, Private First Class, Lance Corporal, Corporal (Jasper), Sergeant, Staff Sergeant (Emmett), Gunnery Sergeant (Rosalie), and then five other higher Sergeant ranks. Enlisted make up the majority of the Marine Corps. They usually enlist out of high school or even after college (like in Jasper's case). While they may not be in formal positions of leadership, it's not uncommon at all for higher ranked enlisted Marines to lead other enlisted.

As far as who outranks whom, commissioned officers outrank enlisted. Technically, a second lieutenant, fresh out of the Academy, outranks a veteran gunnery sergeant… although he/she would be stupid to not respect the experience and expertise of the gunny.

So if you're curious about these characters specifically, rank order would go: Carlisle (obviously), then Edward, then Alice, then Rosalie, then Emmett, and then Jasper.

_Scout Sniper Basic Course_ – is a school in the Marine Corps. It qualifies and trains individuals to be scout snipers. Scout snipers are precision, long-range marksmen who also specialize in reconnaissance.

_White Mountains__ – _in this story, refers to the White Mountain Range, or _Safēd Kōh_, which is located in eastern Afghanistan and stretches into Pakistan. You might recall the phrase, _Tora Bora__, _as in the Battle of Tora Bora in late 2001. That's the name of a cave complex located in the White Mountains region where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters hid. It was notoriously difficult to penetrate because of the terrain.


	8. Chapter 8

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale** are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**June 15****  
****30° 21' 1.5660"****  
****34° 50' 48.7428"****  
****Negev Desert, Israel**

At thirty thousand pound-force of thrust and amplified between the valley walls, the noise was loud enough to wake the dead, let alone any who'd overslept.

But even at five forty-five in the morning and after barely a handful of hours of real rest, oversleeping wasn't a problem for Bella.

Wide awake, alone, and perched on top of an old metal table, itself banged up and decorated by at least a decade's worth of scripted names and notes scratched into its top, she watched a brown and tan fighter rip across the tarmac. As it shot past, a gust of cool air followed in its wake, smacking her in the face and carrying with it the acrid taste of dust and exhaust. Without conscious direction, Bella's arms hugged tight across her chest and her chin ducked inside the warm collar of the too-big, desert-colored fleece that had somehow found its way into her gear. The barest hint of a familiar aftershave lingered in the worn fibers, giving its owner away and threatening to draw her focus from the runway, down the row of tent-like barracks, to the quarters at the very end.

_Wrong time, wrong place_, she told herself, jerking back just in time to catch the jet's nose rising off the concrete at a sharp, upward angle that would have made even the most frequent flier queasy. Scarcely above the ground, its afterburner glowing hot, hellfire red and distorting the air behind it, the fighter suddenly rolled perpendicular, flashing its dove-colored belly as it banked a hard, nauseating left. It leveled out only long enough to streak over the low, craggy mountains to their south.

In a matter of seconds, the aircraft shrank to little more than a shadow against the pale gray morning sky, but Bella tracked its disappearing path anyway, searching for something to take her mind off the scrawled lines of complex equations and schematics she'd spent the last day and a half carefully recreating. No matter how many times she analyzed Riley's work from that bloody hellhole, no matter how many ways she approached it, the conclusion never changed. Nor did their chances of stopping the monsters that stole her weapon.

"_Damn it_…" she muttered under her breath, fingers twitching in agitation. Her resolve broke in less than a minute. Unable to stop herself, Bella reached inside the cargo pocket by her left knee, tugging out a small leather-bound journal and pen. Chewing on the already-mangled cap, she flipped through the pages for the hundredth time, stopping briefly to study the cage-like structure she'd discovered in grad school and carried with her to DARPA.

Near the end, she stopped again, this time on the page she'd filled in only last night. Glaring right back at her in stark black and white was an unmistakable figure, a sketched recreation of the image they'd found hidden below the dust on Riley's whiteboard.

The missile was long, with a high L/D. A pair of twin-sized fuel tanks occupied most of the body, and on its top was the telltale conical head. Only this one had a thin rupture plate that bifurcated the internal casing, tip to base, its dimensions unknown and noted merely as variables. _Familiar, but not_, Bella thought, as her pen flew to the margin and scribbled out a half dozen possibilities.

_Ghazani... Rodong… Shahab... Scud..._

"Where did they find one of you guys… And who the fuck modified it like that…" Her pen tapped a nervous rhythm against the page. "Has to be a binary system… That's got to be it… that's got to be how they're going to–"

A quiet crunch of gravel came from the shadows to her right.

An immediate, answering tremor shot down Bella's arm, and her pen fell through her fingers, hitting the tabletop with a loud, metallic _clang!_ As it bounced to the ground, a tall, dark-haired figure in olive drab materialized at the other end of her table. Frozen and raw from the firefight in that awful desert hideaway, the breath Bella would have sucked in lodged in her throat as a split-second of surprised stillness ticked by.

Still obscured by the shadows, the man moved closer, his boots again crunching against the rocky earth. Forgetting where she was, Bella automatically tracked the sound. Her gaze slowly slid down a wide chest to the black utility belt slung around his waist, and then to the matte black semi automatic strapped to one thigh. A wicked-looking saw-tooth knife in a black webbing sheath sat flush against the other.

Bella watched as a tanned, weather-beaten hand lifted out from the shadows, reaching toward her, and that second of frozen stillness vanished with a wheezy scream. Like a shot from a cannon, her body moved faster than her mind could process. Scrambling backward in a tangle of flailing arms, Bella slid across the table's slick metal surface and tumbled clear over the edge.

El'azar's sure fingers locked around the flinging elbow of the captain's startled scientist in a lightning-quick display of reflexes. Spitting a juicy curse, he yanked her nothing weight up, countering her downward momentum just before her ass hit the dirt. He attempted to right her, but clearly blind to who he was, the woman twisted and fought against his grip, forcing out a few more grumbled curses. When a set of short-cut nails bit into his skin and bent his wrist back at an angle that joint had never been designed to see, El'azar winced. But then he chuckled at her sheer determination.

"It's just me, _Neshama_."

Bella stilled immediately at the Israeli's familiar purr and blew out a ragged breath. Too relieved to do much else, she went limp and let him tug her back up to the table.

But only for a moment. As soon as Bella's heart rate slowed, her shoulders abruptly straightened and she shot him a glare hostile enough that Rosalie would have been proud.

"God!" Bella snapped between gritted teeth, throwing up her hands and launching her journal across the table. "Do you people always have to do that shit?!"

Haloed by the dim light, El'azar's face split in two. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Bullshit." Beyond relief and now moving on to a full-on crimson blush, Bella huffed in aggravation and shoved a wild ribbon of hair behind her ear. "You know full well what I'm talking about."

"_Ma?_" Leaning against the edge of the table, the major winked in that slow, over the top way of his.

The man was the devil incarnate, Bella decided, but nonetheless the corners of her mouth curved up without her permission, ruining her best attempt at _pissed off_. Not bothering to even try to recover it, she just shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You and Captain Cullen both… He did the same crap to me a few days ago."

Bella stretched across the table and grabbed her journal, tucking it back inside her knee pocket. "Seriously, do you two get off on scaring people to death? Or is this sneaky routine just for me?"

The Israeli barked a laugh loud enough that a pair of passing soldiers stopped and turned to stare. In a complete 180, the man's expression suddenly morphed into a tight-lipped scowl worthy of any ticked off drill instructor on the planet, and he waved the two away with a clipped command that didn't need any sort of repeating.

"Eh," El'azar said, turning back to Bella after the two men scurried off, his face doing yet another 180 and going right back to that flirty grin. "I think it just comes with the territory, no?"

"You mean the scaring or the sneaking?"

One thick, dark brow cocked high. "There is a difference?"

Instead of answering, Bella studied the harsh planes of the major's face – the two-inch long scar that traveled along his hairline, the scatter of discoloration under his square jaw and down one side of his neck, the deep-set worry lines that crisscrossed the span of his forehead – before dropping to the straight line of the man's solid shoulders. They were so much like the captain's, she noted. Not in size, but in that same self-assured, no-nonsense bearing that he wore without thought. Two men a world apart but cut from the very same deadly cloth.

Bella tapped her bottom lip before quietly asking, "So if he's the Ghost, who are you?"

El'azar eyed the scientist in return, impressed yet again, this time by an intuition few civilians would ever possess, before glancing away and out across the open field of concrete. At the northernmost tip of the airstrip, a second camouflaged F-16 rolled out of its hangar, readying to join the first for a morning dogfight.

"_Lahav_. My call sign is _Lahav_." His expression turned inscrutable. "You know this word?"

He watched her give a slow nod out of the corner of his eye.

"I can see that."

And from the way the creases in his forehead deepened and the way his gaze automatically averted, staring off into nothing – again, just like Captain Cullen's had done when they'd sat together on that rock out in the middle of the Iranian mountains, her hand in his, as he'd given her a glimpse into the horrors that had made him who he was – it was clear that Major El'azar Dayan had witnessed his own share of nightmares over the years. It was no wonder they were friends.

A football field away, the second fighter's engine roared to life, its turbine spinning up to a high-pitched whine that drowned out all else. For a moment, the two observed it without speaking, following the aircraft as it chased the first and screamed down the runway. Like the other jet, for Bella, its take off was a maneuver out of an action movie, and her stomach gave more than one answering flip as it inverted and rolled.

When the jet climbed into the slowly lightening sky, now pink from the sun peeking over the low ridge behind the barracks, Bella heard the major say, "Remarkable, no?"

"Yeah, it really is." She tucked her chin and burrowed deep into the captain's fleece.

"Such formidable and lethal power..." El'azar mused, still staring out across the horizon. His right forefinger – his primary trigger finger, Bella realized – curled and released in an unconscious, repeating pattern against his opposite wrist. "Yet there is gracefulness and a kind of elegance in its design, no?"

She could say the same about certain people she knew.

But she didn't. Instead, Bella gave the soldier a playful bump on the shoulder. When that didn't draw him back out, she dug her elbow between his ribs, earning her a surprised grunt and look of mild shock. Before she could blink, that sly grin returned with a vengeance.

Without warning, El'azar shoved off the table, spun on his heel, and offered his hand in assistance. "Come, _Neshomeleh,_ we shall walk together."

Her face pinched in confusion, but with a soft chuff and shake of her head, she jumped down to follow. "Where to?"

"Breakfast, of course. After all…" He bowed with a dramatic, put-on flourish. "I swore to you Starbucks upon your return, did I not?"

Bella's jaw dropped. "You're kidding, right?"

"One does not make jokes about coffee." Straightening, he looked at her like she was crazy.

"Where the did you find _Starbucks_…" She waved a wild hand at the wide, dusty desert floor. "Out _here?_"

"What can I say? When I say something will be…" El'azar's shoulders rolled like a proud lion. "It will be so." And then the man's brows wagged hard enough to give Groucho Marx a run for his money, full of insinuation and making Bella blush all over again.

Which, as usual, just made the major howl.

"You're terrible, you know that?" she told him as they stepped out from the barrack's awning. "Screw Blade or anything bad ass like that, incorrigible is your real name. Stencil _that_ on the side of your tank."

El'azar scoffed in mock protest as he motioned toward a worn, poorly lit footpath that wound its way between the rows of barracks to one of the larger tent-like structures near the hangars. "This way," he said. When Bella opened her mouth to reply, he shushed her. "One, I do not have _a_ tank. Beautiful, I have _tanks_." Glancing down as they walked, he flashed her a row of pearly white teeth.

"And two, I prefer _goal-oriented_, an admirable trait by any account… And if you did not know it already, one that my American friend just happens to also possess." His lips mashed together. "Although in his case, in spades."

In that last bit, hiding behind that poorly suppressed amusement, there was a faint but very-much-there shade of warning. Warning of what or against whom, Bella didn't know, so she busied herself studying the overlapping patterns of boot prints embedded in their path.

"Trust me," El'azar said when the scientist looked away. "We are the type that if something or _someone_ finds its way into our sights… it will not escape."

"You really think that?" Her throat bobbed, and inside the pockets of the captain's fleece, her fists squeezed together. "That we'll be able to stop them? In time?"

"_Yehiyeh Asher Yehiyeh."_ El'azar shrugged. "But I wasn't really referring to those terrorist animals… if you know what I mean."

"Wha–" When she caught another exaggerated wag of his brows, Bella stopped herself. Burying her face in her hands to hide the sudden heat that spread across her cheeks, she let out a muffled groan. "Major, you're _killing _me. You're seriously killing me here."

"But it's true," he said, stopping in front of what Bella assumed was the dining hall. Leaning in close, the Israeli winked again. "Just ask my wife."

It took Bella a full second to process what he'd just said, but then it hit her like a ton of bricks. She halted dead in her tracks, threw her head back, and burst into a fit of laughter that earned them a dozen new observers. When her shoulders finally stopped shaking, they relaxed for maybe the first time since she'd left northern Virginia. Wiping her cheeks, not even bothering to hide her answering grin, Bella looked up to find a man very pleased with himself.

"No, incorrigible is absolutely the right word for you. Plus a few others that I won't say out loud."

El'azar's dark eyes danced as he inclined his head. "_Bli safek,_ Dr. Swan."

"Let's go get my Starbucks." Halfway into a sigh, she yawned. "I could use a shot or four of caffeine. And you _so_ owe me."

"As you wish." El'azar's easy smile was short-lived, quickly turning grim. As they entered a large mess hall filled with rows of empty tables and wooden benches, it disappeared altogether. "Unfortunately, ours must be a brief repast. In…" He glanced down at his wrist. "Forty-five minutes, there is a meeting with your general."

"Why?" Her face drained of color. "What's new? What did they find?"

* * *

**June 15****  
****Tactical Command Center****  
****30° 21' 1.5660"****  
****34° 50' 48.7428"****  
****Negev Desert, Israel**

"Sergeants, what do you see?"

Chin in her palm, Rosalie studied the three-dimensional rendering projected from the flat, digitized sand table situated between them. A range of desert-shaded plateaus and mountains ran across the northern and eastern regions of the map, creating a vast spider web of canyons and dried out watercourses. As the curving lines moved east, they flattened and dissolved into a wide, arid plain with not a hint of cover. Rocky cliffs and barely visible strips of beach bordered the southern coast. Here and there, villages and outposts sprinkled what inhabitable land existed.

"Terrain's a motherfucker." The gunny double-tapped the screen controls, zooming to the interior region near their primary target. "These sons of bitches know what they're doing. Look at this… One route in…" Zooming further in, she pointed at a thin, manmade trail that hugged tight to the sides of the canyon walls and terminated at what appeared to be just another plateau. But there was nothing natural about that block of desert brown. And unfortunately, none of the recon drones had been able to penetrate its camouflage, either.

"It'll be a bitch to go in from the north," she added, gesturing to the wide band of sheer, solid rock walls. "Or the west. I'd say our best bet is somewhere in here… to the southeast a ways out. What do you think, Bear-man?"

Chucking an inch-thick file to the side, Emmett stepped up to the table. He stared down at the image, quickly evaluating the rough terrain. After a second of contemplation, he touched a small, brightly lit LCD panel along the table's edge, and the scene abruptly rotated, tilting 20 degrees on its Z-axis. "Agreed," he said as he flipped the topographical plane again, searching for the better view that didn't exist. "We'll have to do a drop, unless you want to do a beach landing. Means a hell of a lot further to go, though." He made a sour face. "And fuck, Captain, you know I hate getting my shit all soggy."

Lit only by the glow of map and the red button switch panels above the massive screens along the walls, the captain's expression was severe as he slowly straightened. "Just how do you think we're going to drop with a civilian?"

"Doc can piggy back me." Emmett shrugged. "Can't weigh much more than all the gear I hump every fuckin' day anyway. You think it'd be any easier dragging her through the surf?"

Edward didn't answer right away. Instead, he leaned down again, concentrating on the span between the southern shoreline and the camouflaged compound in the middle of the higher plateaus. The sergeant was right, he thought, quickly calculating the distance and time. And he was definitely right about Dr. Swan. The woman weighed about as much as a matchstick, not that he'd noticed. But either way, an amphibious landing was off the table.

"Tink? How close can we get?"

The lieutenant's head popped up from a stack of flight paths. With a quick push off the table, she crossed the room to join them, picking her way through the dark to the side opposite Emmett, and squatted level with the screen. "You can probably get a Black Hawk," she said, tilting her chin. "Or a maybe a Super Huey down in that hole, but it won't be quiet, not even with stealth panels and blades. Too much echo off the rock."

"Then where?"

"We'd need to drop up top, say… 5 klicks out." Standing, Alice skimmed a short pink nail across the landscape, stopping on a small flat square of dirt on top of an adjacent plateau. "That'd be a decent extraction point too."

The captain nodded once, a quick, all-business dip of his chin, before glancing over his shoulder to the gray-eyed corporal hunched over a desk in the back of the room. "Anything new?"

"Not yet, sir." Hidden behind a high-tech, multi-screen workstation set up against the far wall, Jasper squinted at one of the screens and frowned. "Langley's dragging ass on gettin' the last round of shots. But, Captain…" The frown deepened. "I don't like what I'm seeing so far."

Edward's jaw rolled and his voice came out like a punch. "Elaborate."

When Jasper clicked the touchpad, one of the large wall-mounted screens behind them flickered to life and briefly lit the darkened room. "You see that?" His pointer hovered over a five-car train of white SUVs en route to the compound. All late model Range Rovers from the looks of them. "Now look at that." Another almost-identical line of white SUVs appeared in a second shot. "And that," he said, clicking again. "Every single day, same vehicles been coming in and out. Like clockwork."

Moving closer, intent on the series of overheads, Rosalie asked, "Where are they coming from?"

Jasper's fingers flew across the keyboard, sending up another cluster of photographs. With each frame, the harsh, natural landscape vanished, replaced by an endless tile work of brown and tan squares separated by a network of narrow streets and darker alleys.

"Ah, damn it!" Emmett muttered, running a quick, irritated hand over his scalp. "I fuckin' _hate_ that city."

With a soft chuckle, Alice danced around the sand table, sidled up close, and slugged him in the bicep. "You hate lots of things, Big Man."

"Whatever." Still preoccupied by the screen, Emmett gave a haphazard swipe, hitting nothing but air when the lieutenant quickly sidestepped and ducked under his arm. "That place…" He shook his head and spat. _"Goddamnit_. I swore I'd never go back there."

"Oh, come on, it wasn't that bad."

"Fuck that," he growled. "Last time, I came out of there with a lung full of sand and a shoulder full of lead." The sergeant smacked the right side of his chest to make a point. "Couldn't they have picked somewhere else? Somewhere nice for once?"

Alice snorted, palming a leftover water bottle lid from a nearby desk. "What? Like the Bahamas?"

"Man, I wish." A meaty fist shot out, closing around the lieutenant's plastic arsenal when she flicked it. "You gotta admit, though, it would be a nice change of pace."

Without a hint of grace, Alice plopped down into an old, busted up office chair. She twisted sideways, kicked her boots over the armrest, and wrinkled her nose. "Nah…" Even quicker than the sergeant, she plucked the returning lid out of the air no more than an inch away from her face. "I really don't want to see you in swimming trunks."

Emmett just rolled his eyes and leaned against the edge of the table, one ankle over the other. "You only wish."

"No, seriously," Alice fired back, palm flying to her throat as she faked a shuddering gag. "I don't need to see that shit… like ever." She shivered again. But then she glanced over to the tall gunnery sergeant, who was still poring over the scenes on the monitors and pretending that they didn't exist for all she was worth. Alice's lips curled up. "_Now_… I bet Blon–"

"Okay! Never fucking mind!" Before Alice could start up again, the big man jumped forward, grabbed the back of her chair, giving it a hard rattle, and roughly spun her like a top. The chair squawked in protest but it still made a solid four rotations before finally slowing to a stop. When it did, the lieutenant just leaned back and folded her arms behind her head, unperturbed, unapologetic, and still wearing the same evil grin. "Awesome. Do it again."

"Jazz," Edward went on, ignoring Emmett's and Alice's never-ending banter. Dodging the sand table, he strode through a graveyard of rickety chairs and approached the screen. Stopping beside Rosalie, his hands dropped to his hips, assuming an all-too familiar pose. "That fourth pic, zoom in on that caravan."

The corporal made quick work of the shot, cutting out what noise the software could handle and filling in the missing pixels. The image wavered and blurred, but then with another stroke of the keyboard, the lines sharpened enough that Edward could read the black _Range Rover_ lettering written across the tops of the noses.

"That as low as you can go?" the gunny asked.

"Yep, that's it. All you can really get is straight down. Not even half a plate, if they've even got 'em at all. With all the high rocks around, there's too much shadow and shit and the angles are all wrong."

"Damn it."

"Can't grab any of the targets to compare against that initial set either. No clue if that blond fucker is there or not." Jasper's pointer moved from vehicle to vehicle. "See, all the windows are tinted and they always keep 'em rolled up." A new image came up on an adjacent screen, an enhanced cutout of another photo. "Best I got was a fuzzy pic through the windshield of a newspaper sitting on the dashboard. _USA Today_, of all things."

Edward blew out an aggravated breath. "Can you get 'em when they're exiting?"

"Sorry, Captain. I got nothing in that compound. They've camo'd that shit up tight. And in the city, they pull up under a carriage house type of entryway. Like Blondie said, they're not stupid. Whoever this is, they're pros, all the way."

"What about the building itself?" Edward's focus bounced from image to image, committing every last detail to memory. "Tell me we've got something there."

"Oh, yeah. Definitely."

Another series of shots flipped to the top of the deck, quickly centering in on a large, white, flat-top roof located in the far western sector where the city's handful of larger homes and villas hid behind thick concrete walls and iron fences. In other words, a regular Who's Who neighborhood of crooked politicians, warlords, and arms dealers.

Like its neighbors, the target villa was heavily fortified, with double-coiled razor wire along the top of the perimeter wall and covered turrets securing each corner. At least half a dozen private guards, all in black fatigues and carrying wood-trimmed automatics – seasoned mercenaries from the looks of them – roamed the rooftop of the main house, as well as two smaller buildings located across the courtyard. A kidney-shaped pool with bright teal water – the height of luxury in this godforsaken place – sat in the middle, surrounded by a line of perfectly ordered loungers.

Jasper stood with a stretch and crack of his back and moved out from around the workstation. "Place belongs to some _businessman_ out of Europe. CIA says the paperwork and shit is buried under an alias, so we don't have a name yet. But the European connection fits with what Laurent told you." With a tip and twist of his chin, the younger man's neck let out a volley of cringe-worthy pops. "No worries, though, I'm working on it separately. El'azar called in a favor and gave me a _serious_ contact at King Saul Boulevard, so I've got inquiries in there. I'll have something credible by the end of the day."

Just as the captain started to answer, the outside door creaked open, introducing a pale gray strip of light that stretched across the entire length of the darkened room. A pair of shadows slipped through – one wide, familiar, and a head taller, the other no less unmistakable.

"_Seren?_"

"Speak of the devil, and he appears," Edward muttered, raking a hand through his hair.

"Eh, better the devil you know than the one you don't. Isn't that the phrase?" El'azar tapped his forefinger to his head in mock salute. "And _Boker Tov_ to you, too."

With one last fleeting look at the bank of screens, Edward turned to the corporal. "Keep on those idiots at Langley, but don't wait on 'em. You do whatever you need to and if you get any pushback, let me know." His voice dropped low. "I want every goddamned thing we can get on that compound and whoever owns those SUVs. And I don't give a fuck how we get it."

"Will do, sir."

One hand light against the small of her back, the major motioned Bella forward. "Your delivery, O Mighty One."

Just inside the door, Bella paused, giving herself a moment to adjust. It took a handful of slow blinks before shapes began to form out of the darkness. A handful more, and she could finally see well enough to name their location.

All the way across the room, behind the captain and his gunny, a floor to ceiling bank of computer monitors, all larger than her living room flatscreen at home, occupied an entire wall. To the right, was a long row of modern workstations, each station decked out with arrays of smaller screens and double keyboards, and to the left, a wide whiteboard hung, surrounded on all sides by a half a dozen paper maps. Beat up chairs and random tables littered the tiled floor.

But it was what sat in the very center that grabbed Bella's attention. Drawn to the glow from the strange horizontal screen, she took a careful step forward and then slowly threaded her way through the maze. Ignoring the Marines in the room, fascinated by the translucent, three-dimensional topographical interpretation that seemed to literally jump out at her, Bella leaned over the sand table. She reached down, gingerly, grinning like a cat when the image parted like curtains around her hand.

"That's… pretty _slick_."

"It's handy, yes."

Bella's head shot up, searching. She stopped, however, when her scan landed on the screens to Edward's immediate right. "That's… a satellite shot?" Wheels turning, she licked her lips and swallowed. "Holy shit. Remind me to never, ever, _ever_ go outside again."

Edward's lips threatened to curve at her parted ones as he came up beside her. He studied their scientist in the glowing light for a long, quiet moment before that almost-smile turned down quick when he caught the plum-gray swipes of color in the hollows of her eyes.

So softly she almost didn't hear, Edward said, "You didn't sleep enough."

"Couldn't." She chewed her bottom lip before extending something in his direction. "Here, I brought you this."

"What is it?" he asked, not looking away from her tired, pretty face as his palm locked around something smooth, cylindrical, and warm.

One brow jumped up in a graceful arc. "Coffee."

Hearing his own words echoed back at him, the captain bit back a laugh – a first for the day, or maybe even the week – as he peeled off the lid. "Touché, Doctor, touché, but… _thank you_."

Expecting the usual Israeli-special, Edward slugged back a shot with a preparatory wince, only to choke when his tongue met something else altogether. This time it was his jaw that dropped. "Where the hell did you get this?!"

Fighting a smile, Bella thumbed toward El'azar, who'd taken up residence on a desk beside Alice. Covering her mouth, the lieutenant whispered something to the major that made him slap his hand against his thigh and laugh. "That guy. He promised me." A second later, Bella's face twisted toward Edward. "Did you know he's married?"

Edward gulped back half his coffee.

"You _did_," she accused, shoving as much scandal into her voice as she could.

"Maybe," he said after a second gulp.

"You two are just… unbelievable." Shaking her head, Bella grumbled something under her breath – something about men and humor and baseball bats – before cutting herself off mid-sentence. "Let me guess… he has kids, too."

"Three little girls." Edward gave her a rare second of a grin, looking half a decade younger and nothing like the weary, battle-worn man she'd witnessed in the mountains. Gone were the bruises and blood and voice haunted by horrors. No, he was again the freshly shaven, straight-shouldered commander, and she couldn't help but replay the conversation she and El'azar had had before breakfast. With another flash of a smile, Edward tossed back the rest of his coffee, crumpled the paper cup, and launched it across the room, hitting the Israeli square in the chest. "And for full disclosure, one of them plans to marry me."

El'azar belted a laugh and batted the paper back, missing by a mile. "Sorry, Captain. You're, as they say, old news. Tan's moved on to that Beaver kid."

A muffled, accidental, "It's Bieber," came from the left, where the staff sergeant stared a hole through a stack of paperwork. The room went deathly silent, broken only when Rosalie made a noise somewhere between a cough and a snort and Alice simultaneously erupted into a fit of girlish giggles.

"Whatever his name is." El'azar fingered the knife by his hip with a huff. "I see one more poster in her bedroom and I will most surely kill him."

"Fine by me."

A few minutes and a dozen jokes at Emmett's expense later, waiting for the signal from the general, Bella reached down into her cargo pocket, withdrew her journal, and quietly asked the captain, "You have a second?"

His eyes, astute, intense, and bright even in the shadows, flew to hers. "What do you have?"

Moving over to a nearby wooden table and gesturing for him to follow, Bella cracked open her journal. "I spent some time reanalyzing the paperwork we recovered, as well as the diagrams that had been erased from the whiteboard," she explained. Fingers shaking, she sped through the handwritten pages, this time not bothering to stop until she hit the last one. "You see that?" Her finger traced the telltale outline. "What does that look like to you?"

Standing perpendicular, Edward leaned in close enough that the air felt a little warmer. Bella took an involuntary breath, and the same faint, masculine scent that lingered on the jacket she wore overwhelmed the staleness of dust and hot electronics.

"Missile. Maybe short-range," he finally answered, reaching down to flatten the page. When his fingertips skimmed the back of her hand, they both stilled, but neither moved away.

"Not just any missile." Bella took a shaky breath. "Think SS-1."

"How do you know that?"

"You've heard the old saying, with brilliance comes eccentricity, right?" she started, slow at first but gaining speed. It reminded Edward of the determined excitement he'd witnessed when she and Jasper tore apart her NVGs and found a way to read the unreadable.

"Riley was both of those. Brilliant and definitely, without a doubt, eccentric," she went on. A strand of hair escaped Bella's ponytail and snagged on her lip. Distracted, she shoved it out of her face, only to have it fall back down the second she tilted her head. When her hand lifted to repeat the motion, the captain beat her to it, rolling the silky strands between two fingers before carefully tucking it behind her ear.

"Go on, Doctor," he told her, his voice low and strangely soft.

"It's proportional."

Edward's forehead folded. "How do you mean?"

"He was obsessive about proportion in rendering – drawings, schematics, diagrams, whatever. If it came out of his pen, it was already to scale. And he had to have a picture in front of him to work. Riley couldn't think otherwise and he'd obsess until he'd gotten it perfect. It's probably why they gave him that whiteboard in the first place." Bella stared off into space, eyes suddenly glassy. "He was probably going crazy without it."

When Edward's fingertips brushed across the back of her hand again, Bella's gaze dropped to the page. "Look at the shape of it," she whispered. "It's right around 13 to 14:1, height over diameter."

Edward stared at the drawing, following the lines as he ran through years' worth of study and real life practice. "There's only a handful of missiles that meet that criteria."

She nodded. "Exactly. Couple that with the taper and the fins on the tail… it has to be either an old Scud or some variant built off the same platform. I'm sure there's a black market for old Soviet weapons, not to mention all the copycats out of Iran and North Korea, but… maybe it narrows down the field…"

"It does. It also gives us a radius for the potential launch sites. We're talking… only a few hundred miles, so they're going to have to have a plan to get it in the country or off the coast. Excell–"

"That's not all, Captain. See that centerline drawn inside the warhead?" Bella pointed to the thin, dotted line that split the head down the middle.

"Yeah, looks like a rupture plate to me. Like what they used to use in the old Bigeye bombs."

"I think so, too." Bella rubbed the grit off her face with a grimace. "That's one of the methods you can use to load up VX. Two precursors, one on each side. You rig a trigger – time, airspeed, or something like that – and the plate will fail mid-flight, allowing the two components to mix and react." A pang pulsed across her temples. "By the time the warhead strikes, it's at full strength with a shitload of pressure behind it…"

Edward swore. "They can do the same with XR-5?"

Bella's throat bobbed and she hugged one arm around her middle. "VX is what I used for the basis when I came up with it to start with. They behave almost identically because they're structured so similarly. XR-5 is like…"

"A bad ass bigger brother."

"Pretty much… that's precisely what it is. Just much bigger. And much more bad ass."

"Dr. Swan?" he said when Bella abruptly looked down again. He waited until her chin came up, but those sharp, intelligent eyes of hers stayed glued to the table. His hand covered hers, gently squeezing and forcing them back up. "This isn't your fau–"

"Captain?" Jasper called from across the room.

Swearing again, Edward reluctantly backed away, only then realizing just how close they'd been. He turned to the corporal. "You got something?"

"One of those _inquiries_ just paid off."

"A name?"

"Not quite." The screen closest flickered blue, and then in its center the same grainy shot the CIA had handed over that day in the general's office appeared. Jasper slid the photograph over, adding a second beside it. Only this one was far less dark and far less fuzzy.

Set against a white plaster backdrop, the male target was no more than forty with long, stringy blond hair pulled together at the nape. Prominent, hawk-billed nose, deep-set eyes, and with a heavy ridged scar down his right cheek, he wore the demeanor and lethal grace to match the weapons tucked behind his waistband. "That was taken outside that villa in Mogadishu two days ago," Jasper said as he brought up a handful of other images, each one showing the very same man. "That's pretty clear confirmation, don't you think?"

"Agreed." Edward took in the man's easy but ready gait, the set of his shoulders, the knowledge in his gaze, and he knew that initial assessment was dead on.

Another screen lit up. "And there's this one, too."

Near one of the small buildings across the villa's courtyard, a group of militants in black fatigues – the same mercenaries who guarded the rooftops – gathered around the blond. It was the best full face shot they had, but that wasn't what now commanded Edward's attention.

Standing in the far corner, half hidden beneath an awning and partially covered by a charcoal scarf, stood a new figure.

A woman. And he could just make out the wild mane of her fiery red curls.

When he started to move closer to the screen, five slender fingers suddenly locked around Edward's forearm. Edward glanced down just in time to see Bella point, mouth agape, and hear her say, "I know her!"

.

.

.

* * *

**Notes:  
**

* * *

**Hebrew (transliterated):**

_Neshama_ – recall from chapter 4, means "soul" and is used kind of like darling.

_Ma?_ – huh? What?

_Lahav_ –blade, or flame. Figuratively, a sharply polished blade or point of a weapon.

_Neshomeleh – _another term of endearment that means something like sweetheart.

_Yehiyeh Asher Yehiyeh – _what will be will be.

_Bli Safek_ – without a doubt

_Boker Tov_ – means good morning.

* * *

**Glossary:**

_Afterburner _– if you ever see a bright red fireball that looks like it's in a fighter jet's exhaust pipe, more than likely that's an afterburner in use. Basically, it's an extra combuster that can be tacked on to a military jet's main powerplant downstream of the turbine to increase thrust. It's not at all fuel efficient, but it's a feature that can be turned on for limited periods of time to help with short / fast take-offs or when an extra boost is needed in-flight. For example, a normal F-16 turbofan might produce around 18,000 pound-force of thrust, but with full afterburner, that cranks up to around 30,000 or so.

_Binary Chemical Weapon_ – because of the instability and reactivity of some chemical weapons compounds, including nerve agents like sarin and VX, it's sometimes safer/easier to synthesize the toxic material _after_ the weapon has been deployed. To do this, two final precursors are loaded into two sections of the warhead, separated by some kind of physical partition. A control mechanism is applied, which when specified, will remove the partition and thus cause the two precursors to mix and react together inside the warhead mid-flight and prior to detonation.

_Black Hawk_ – or the Sikorsky UH-60 utility helicopter, used primarily by the US Army. There are numerous utility and special purpose variants and configurations. Two specially modified stealth Black Hawks were used in the raid on Osama bin Laden. As an aside, one of my favorite movies is _Black Hawk Down_.

_King Saul Boulevard_ – is a reference to the Mossad headquarters, located just off that street in Tel Aviv.

_L/D_ – is just a common way engineers of varying disciplines refer to the ratio of the length of an object to its diameter. Something with a high L/D means the object is tall and skinny. A low L/D means it's short and squatty.

_Missile_ – is a generic name for any self-propelled, guided weapon. There are several types, meant for varying purposes, but they all generally have the following main parts: an engine and fuel (to move it), a flight system (to drive it), a targeting system (to tell it what to hit), and a warhead (to destroy its target). Shape-wise, they're almost always cylindrical with a cone-shaped warhead on top, but dimensions can vary quite a bit. Ranges vary from a hundred meters or so in the case of small anti-tank missiles like the FGM-148 Javelin all the way up to intercontinental, such as in the case of the LGM-30 Minuteman III ICBM. The names Bella listed (_Ghazani. Rodong. Shahab. Scud_) are all tactical ballistics missiles, capable of around 300 km or so, and can be fitted with a variety of warheads, including high explosive, incendiary, chemical, radiological, penetrating, etc.

_Sand table_ – is an old term for using sand/dirt/rocks/etc in a confined area to create small-scale maps or mock-ups for educational and/or coordination purposes. They're used to model terrain, plan artillery and troop movements, target locations, etc. Today's "sand tables" can be rather sophisticated, using the latest and greatest imaging hardware and software in lieu of actual sand or dirt. But even today out on battlefields, units may make their own quick planning maps using by drawing in the dirt.

_Super Huey_ – or the Bell UH-1Y Venom utility helicopter, used currently only by the USMC. It will eventually replace the Corps' UH-1N Twin Hueys.


	9. Chapter 9

Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight. I'm borrowing her characters, dressing them up in MARPAT, and giving them some guns. **BilliCullen** and **Scooterstale** are making sure they're ready for inspection.

* * *

**June 15****  
****Tactical Command Center****  
****30° 21' 1.5660"****  
****34° 50' 48.7428"****  
****Negev Desert, Israel**

The room went absolutely silent, and every pair of eyes shot to the front. A long, tense second passed, during which not a soul moved or spoke or even breathed, where even the air seemed to have frozen. Another ticked by, and then another, and another, each one longer and tenser than the last, until a single, quiet command broke the stillness.

"Explain."

Clipped and low, the captain's voice held an undercurrent of something indefinable and dangerous that set Bella's teeth on edge, like a blade slowly raking across her skin, pressing down just shy of breaking through.

Forcing herself not to shiver, Bella dropped her hold on Edward's arm, vaguely noting that the sinewy muscle beneath his long sleeve tee gave an involuntary flex when her grip loosened. Eyes glued to the screens, she moved forward, haltingly, stopping less than a foot away.

"Jasper?" Bella asked as she lifted a hand to skim her fingertips over the half-hidden face framed by familiar fire-red curls.

"Yeah, Doc?"

She spared a quick glance over her shoulder to the corporal, who, like the rest of them, stared back at her with open speculation. "The coloration in these images… it's close, right?"

"Yeah, should be." Jasper frowned, tilting his head as his focus shifted from her to the pixels. He clicked one of the tabs at the top of the frame and brought up a new, smaller window in the upper left corner. In it was a complex yellow on black graph with an array of multivariate inputs. "Maybe just a little off." With another quick double-click, he dragged one of the lines on the graph, reshaping the upper curve. "There's a little bit of skewing in the gray balance, but not much. Her hair's about as red as it comes, if that's what you're asking."

Chewing her thumbnail, Bella nodded slowly before turning back.

"Doctor?" Edward stepped up beside their scientist, his gaze moving back and forth between her expression of wild confusion and the screen. Leaning in close, his arm brushed Bella's as he reached past her and tapped the space just over the woman's head. He said again, this time even softer but still with that hard, razor edge. "I need you explain just how you know this woman. _Right now_."

A deep crease appeared between Bella's brows, and her eyes, dark and alive, flew to the captain's. Shadows formed by the glow from the screens slid across his face and hollowed out his cheeks, making the sharp, masculine lines all the more severe.

"I don't _know_ her," she answered after another long, uncomfortable second. "We weren't friends or colleagues, or anything like that." Bella's lips mashed together as she rolled her fist up in the fabric of the captain's jacket to keep from ripping off yet another nail. "But I've seen her before – a few times. And I talked to her once."

"Are you sure it's the same person?"

She nodded quickly this time, biting the inside of her cheek. "I'm sure. It's definitely her."

Instead of pushing, Edward took a step back to give her some space. As he leaned against the edge of the table behind them, he stole a quick, hard glance over to Rosalie and mouthed, "You getting all this?"

The gunny nodded once, a short, curt affirmative.

"Riley…" Bella fell back to copy Edward's position against the table, hugging her free arm tight across her middle. Her opposite fist wound tighter in the captain's fleece. "He was friends with her… but he wanted to be more than that."

Edward's bearing didn't change. Nor did the sharpness of his tone. "Were they close?"

Bella grimaced. "I'm… I don't know. I'm not sure how much of it was him hoping and how much was real, if that makes sense. He didn't date much. But he seemed to really like her, so I didn't want to jinx anything by overanalyzing or interfering." Her forehead crumpled on the last word and her eyes dropped, and then the rest came out so softly that Edward wasn't 100% sure he heard her right. "I should have. I should have given him the third degree like he would have given me."

Something tense and unnamable slowly uncoiled as Edward studied the woman beside him, watching the way she fidgeted inside of his oversized jacket. The damned thing swallowed her whole, making her seem smaller than she already was. That uncooperative strand of hair fell again, gently curling against her cheek in open temptation. Something hot panged inside his chest, so he shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from doing something stupid. "It's probably a good thing that you didn't," he finally told her, staring over her head and into the dark. "If you had gotten in their way, you would've made yourself a target."

Even in the dark, he could see the color leave her cheeks, and worse, the telltale shine of her eyelashes.

Eyes always moving, the captain's gaze slid over to the sand table and to the unforgiving terrain he'd already seen too many times first-hand. In a better world, he'd have given their scientist a moment and let her compose herself when she was good and ready. But then again, he thought as he dug deeper into his pockets, in a better world, she wouldn't be here to start with, her formula would still be safe in Virginia, and there would be no need to drag her or anyone else into the heart of hell itself.

His thumb flicked across the worn grip of the pocketknife he'd carried for ages. But they were _here,_ in a world where he'd already had to pull one tortured scientist out of a bloody pit in the middle of the Iranian desert, and that meant that time was something they just didn't have.

"Doctor." Edward paused for a beat when she started, but then went on, his focus moving between her and the screen. "Look, I need you to tell us everything you remember. Even small things that you may think mean nothing. Anything is better than what we have." He bent at the knees until they were eye level. When Bella followed his cue and looked up from the floor, there was surprising grit in the brace of her jaw line, and when she gave herself a little shake and straightened her shoulders, the corner of Edward's mouth lifted without permission. "Good… Now, let's start with where you met her."

The crease in her forehead deepened as she thought for a minute before finally asking, "Do you know where our building is?"

When Edward shook his head, Alice suddenly piped in from behind them, "You guys are right across the street from the Capitals on North Randolph, right?"

Bella angled toward the lieutenant, where she was still perched on top of one of the desks, swinging her legs as though they were on a picnic instead of inside a war room. Beside her, the Israeli major sat silent and still as death, no doubt cataloguing every word.

"Yeah, that's right," Bella said, slowly and to them both. "And there's also a bunch of shops–"

A grumbled, "So that's how she knew," came from the other side of the room.

Alice rolled her eyes with an irritated chuff… a split-second before the staff sergeant yelped when she chucked something heavy, nailing him in the chest. "Doofus, I live in Virginia Square. Remember? My condo is all of two miles away. I know _everything_ that's there."

Fighting a grateful, unexpected smile at the two Marines' never ceasing banter, Bella turned back to Edward. "Anyway… there's a mall with several restaurants across the street. It's a pretty common spot for us to go for lunch or to grab some coffee. Just to get out of the building for a little while."

The soft, rubbery pad of Rosalie's boots came from their right. "That whole area has to be crawling with cameras. How'd they not pick him out?" She looked over to Edward. "The CIA had to have gone through all that shit, right? They can't be that stupid."

Edward crossed an arm over his chest and dropped his chin into his palm. "Agreed." His eyes cut over to Bella. "Any reason why they wouldn't have spotted him?"

At first she didn't answer. But then, scrubbing her face, Bella laughed a brittle, humorless laugh behind her hands and muttered a bitter, "Maybe because Riley didn't want them to."

Rosalie opened her mouth to question, but Bella's hands dropped back down to her sides and she stopped the other woman with a shake of her head and a heavy exhale. "Understand, neither one of us have really gotten out too much over the past couple of years."

"What does tha–"

"We were working all the damned time for one thing." Bella scrubbed her face again, this time slower, inhaling the lingering scent of the captain's aftershave. "And, well, let's put it like this, it's not exactly comfortable to go out when you're being followed all the time."

"Followed?" Rosalie's voice was sharp as a blade, but the instant glint in her blue eyes was sharper, piercing despite the darkness.

Offering her a bland smile, Bella waved at the air, at nothing and everything all at once. "Security detail. They kept their distance, never interfered or anything, but we knew they were there."

The gunnery sergeant's ponytail whipped across her face. "The fuck?"

"Look at what we were working on." Bella shrugged. "Not exactly stuff you want getting out."

Without a sound, Jasper took position opposite Rosalie, wearing a matching, tight-skinned mask of quiet outrage, and behind them, a palm simultaneously smacked against wood, followed by a fast volley of curses in both Hebrew _and_ English.

As for the man in front of her, while his voice betrayed nothing, the lean muscles that roped the tops of Edward's forearms flexed and rolled with rigid control. "Go on."

"It annoyed Riley a lot more than me." Bella hesitated. "It's why he'd leave simulations running like he was still there and why he'd cut through the labs instead of the using the main halls. He used to go through the entire building to the south service entrance just to cross the street … And he'd wear hats and throw on a jacket… And he always paid attention and knew exactly where the cameras were." She glanced up. "We used to joke about it. It was almost like a game for him. Like a crazy adult game of hide and seek." She laughed another one of those bitter, humorless laughs. "Thing is, Riley was smarter than they were… and he knew it."

Across the way, Jasper rocked back on his heels, and Bella knew, from the way his features narrowed in thought, without a doubt, the engineer-turn-Marine sniper would have done the very same. Only, considering the way he'd torn her NVGs to pieces, only to put them back together again, he'd have dismantled the cameras altogether. Or maybe he'd have just shot them down.

Bella paused and peered over the captain's shoulder to the woman on the screen, staring at the red curls caught scattering in the breeze. "That's where she worked – in a coffee shop there on the bottom floor of the mall. I remember seeing her there a few times when I met him over there. He said she was a grad student in the Physics department at Georgetown. She was supposedly working part-time to help pay for school." Her tone turned distant and hollow. "He thought she was beautiful and brilliant. He was even thinking about talking to our boss about offering her a study position."

Edward motioned for Jasper to kill the screen. "When did all this start?"

With a single click, the screen turned black, and Bella blinked against the darkness. "Hard to say," she finally mumbled, still lost in thought. "At least a few months before he disappeared." Her teeth came together with an audible snap. "It took him two just to get up enough nerve to ask her to dinner, and that was back in March."

When the captain sent the corporal another quick, unspoken gesture, the younger man spun back toward the workstation. To Bella, he said, "We need to get the name of that coffee shop to the CIA and the times he might have been there. Maybe they can grab security shots and employment records. I'm sure it was all fake, but it's something. More than we had." Edward raked a hand through his hair, his mind already moving a mile a minute. "You said you talked to her? What about?"

"Only once for any real length of time. I really don't remember what about… probably something stupid and typical, like the weather. Maybe I asked her how her thesis was going. Honestly, I just don't remember." Anger and the same hint of unspent violence that Edward had seen in the General's office swam in the shadows of her eyes. "I'd been working on solubility parameters all day, and it was all I could think about." Bella shoved off the table and paced half way across the room and back.

She froze, however, when she heard the whisper of an Israeli's inflection through a radio sitting on one of the desks. "She had an accent…" Glancing around the room, she pieced together the few memories of the woman she had. "Irish or Scottish maybe. It wasn't strong, like she'd been in the U.S. a long time. But I remember it. And she was educated and very articulate, which she would have had to have been to convince Riley that she was studying Physics."

"Age? Height?"

"She was… I don't know… I'd assumed late twenties or maybe early thirties, but it's impossible to say for sure. A couple of inches taller than me, so maybe 5'8"?"

"Build?"

"Slim, but still athletic. I could tell she ran or biked or something like that."

Emmett's head popped up just over Rosalie's shoulder. "Anything unique about her appearance? Any weird birthmarks? Tatts?"

Bella's lids slid closed. "Pale green eyes, like those York Peppermint commercials. Narrow chin. Bone white complexion. And … and she had a tattoo on the inside of her left wrist." As she spoke, in the background, Jasper's keyboard clicked at breakneck speed. Her eyes scrunched together. "Don't know what it was. All I remember her wearing was long sleeves, but once I saw red and black lines peeking out from under her cuff. Whatever it was looked pretty… professional? Like the lines were clean and the color was deep. Does that help any?"

The clicking abruptly stopped. "Absolutely." And when Bella finally looked at him again, Edward nodded in agreement. "Do you have a name? What did Dr. Biers call her?"

"Riley just called her Vicky."

The name echoed in the room, and those burned up tickets they'd dug out of the ashes shot through Bella's mind. Making an angry, unintelligble sound of frustration, she bit the inside of her cheek again, this time hard enough to taste copper, and she threw her hands up. "I can't believe I didn't see it…" she sputtered, grabbing the back of a nearby chair. "Back at that… _place_." A tremor raced down her spine. "It just… it didn't even occur to me…_Fuck!_"

Rosalie responded before any of them. "It's probably a fake name anyway. Not your fault, Doc."

"But–"

"But nothing." The gunnery sergent's crossed arms and unyielding, iron bearing was a loud, no-nonsense dare for anyone present to disagree. "You've already done more than anyone here expected. If we nail these bastards, it's because you're here with us. So don't even go there."

The captain and the gunny shared a long beat of silent communication, ending when Rosalie pursed her lips and inclined her head toward Bella. Maybe a little surprised by his Marine's unexpected – and _vehement_ – support for their charge, Edward responded with his own, near-identical expression of unmitigated agreement.

Grim, determined, he spun on his heel and crossed the handful of empty paces to their scientist. Stopping less than a foot away, seeing the way she damned near vibrated with self-directed fury and fear, Edward let his voice go soft as silk, and when Bella looked up, eyelashes still damp, he finally gave in and pushed that stray strand of shimmering hair away from her face one more time. "I have to ask. And I'm sorry I do…" His thumb ghosted across her cheek. "But is there any way that Dr. Biers could have been compromised?"

When Bella shook her head, it was hard enough her teeth rattled. "_Never_. No way. He may have slipped his minders, but that was just him wanting some privacy and wanting to screw around with them." She shook her head again. "Riley understood his role and its importance. He could have done R&D anywhere. Industry, academia… _anywhere, _Captain." Without conscious direction, her palm flew to his forearm like before and she squeezed as though she could physically force him to comprehend. "He chose DARPA because he got ulcers from watching the news at night. From watching people like _you_ get hurt." Her fingernails dug in deeper. "He wanted to create something to stop wars before they started, to put something in our arsenal that would make anyone think twice. Something no one would ever have to actually use. There's no way he would purposefully put it in the wrong hands."

Making no effort to remove her hold, Edward's brows lifted. "But…"

"But he was… naïve," she finished, softer, recalling the pale pink blush that had colored her best friend's neck every time their twenty-something admin, Bree, walked his way. "And he liked Vicky so much and he was _so_ lonely sometimes." Bella took a long, slow breath and her hand dropped back to the chair. "I could see… I could see someone like Vicky, or Victoria, or whatever her real name is, promising him things and him believing every word she said. I could see him happily agreeing to drive her home late after work. Or meeting her somewhere to help her with her thesis. He would have _skipped_ into a trap, without even suspecting."

"Captain?" the corporal called from his workstation. "Sorry to interrupt, but we got incoming on the secure line from Quantico."

Edward didn't respond immediately. Instead, he kept his focus on the woman in front of him. Neither moved.

"Captain?"

Bella's gaze dropped first, and then, reluctantly, Edward turned with a muttered curse, reclaimed his previous position facing the bank of monitors, and waved the corporal the go ahead. A second later, the main screen lit bright blue. In the dead center, a familiar, white spread eagle design pulsed a handful of times before the blue background abruptly gave way to an equally familiar face and scene.

The atmosphere in the room immediately shifted. Bella watched as the already-straight line of the captain's shoulders morphed into steel. In the back of the room, a pair of boots hit the floor with a muted thud, and she didn't have to turn around to know that the lieutenant's previous picnic stance now matched her commander's.

Edward's chin dipped in automatic deference. "General."

At six thousand miles away and one in the morning, Lieutenant General Carlisle Cullen's pale blue eyes were as clear as any here in the Negev. In front of his own bank of sophisticated computers manned by a slew of junior Marines and wearing a crisp beige uniform shirt without a hint of a wrinkle, Bella quickly realized that, for the general, time was a meaningless entity.

"Captain Cullen." Carlisle performed a quick scan of the room. Wearing an expression carved from granite, he paused on each member of the team, finally cocking a single salt and blond brow when he landed on the Israeli in the back. "_Shalom_, Major."

Still seated, El'azar's lips curved. "And to you as well, General Cullen."

"They're letting you play?"

El'azar barked a laugh and stretched to his feet. "Unfortunately, I have been relegated to but a spectator. For the moment, that is." His dark eyes flashed with the same kind of predatory anticipation Bella had seen in another man here in the desert. "As you well know, sometimes politicians are spineless creatures. And always, they are dense. Rest assured, it is being taken care of, however."

"Good to know. Your team is always a welcome ally." General Cullen smiled a ruthless smile before turning those ice blue eyes back to Edward. "Now, Captain, where are we?"

Wasting no time or breath, Edward immediately launched into a lightning-fast rundown of the last two days, using terms and phrases Bella had no hope of following. Five minutes in, however, as the soon as the captain uttered a terse, "_SS-1_," along with her name, she caught up quick.

"Impressive, Doctor." The general eyed her with the same shrewd appreciation she imagined Rosalie gave a brand new rifle. "How sure are you about the missile system?"

Bella swallowed but stepped forward. "I can't be absolutely positive, but based on everything I know about Dr. Biers, I'd say it's very likely." When she added a belated, uncertain, _sir_, at the end, Edward's lips twitched. So did his uncle's.

"Fair enough. Could you tell how far along they'd gotten?"

The papers she'd pored over the past few days burned bright in her mind. "I think they have most of the design. It looks like Ri– _Dr. Biers_ tried to stall as long as he could, but still…" She blew out a puff of air before delivering the bleak message she'd tried her damnedest to convince herself wasn't true. "If they have someone who knows what they're doing – someone who knows chemical weapons – I think they could get it to work with what they have."

The general's skin pulled tight across his cheekbones as, behind him, a half dozen junior Marines' heads twisted toward them. His voice dropped in pitch and turned to gravel. "How long do you think that would take?"

"Depends on what, and _who_, they have at their disposal. If they already have the rocket… and if the cone has already been modified…" Inside her chest, her heart hammered a fast, painful rhythm against her sternum. The air in her lungs blazed like fire. "I'd say no more than two weeks to tweak and prep the primary precursors, less if they figure out they can use straight elemental sulfur instead of a polysulfide… That's all assuming their chemist is starting cold."

"If they're not?"

Bella's answer came hard and fast. "I could do it in a couple of days."

Carlisle spat a curse and then barked a command to one of his junior officers, who bolted up from his chair and sped from the room. In an all-too-familiar gesture, he shoved his fingers through his short-cropped hair before turning once more to Edward. "You said you had more intel on one of those satellite shots."

"Yes, sir. We have a new face, and a name to go with it."

Fingers steepled, Carlisle leaned forward. "Details."

As Jasper pulled up the images of the villa in Mogadishu, focusing in on the woman Riley had just called Vicky, Edward rolled into another lightning-fast round of updates, repeating the same conversation they'd had moments before. By the time he finished, three more of the general's Marines had vanished from the command center, not wasting a single precious second.

Through the monitor, the general's gaze swept the room again, and when his eyes locked with hers, penetrating and calculating, Bella recognized exactly where the captain had inherited that innate, unspoken magnetism she'd picked up within minutes of their first meeting. Her back automatically straightened and her shoulders pulled back.

"What's your plan?" Carlisle said, addressing the younger version of himself.

Fists dropping to his hips, Edward replied without a moment of hesitation. "We need to move quick. Ideally, I'd say we run through it a few times, to test for contingencies and to see where the stress points are, but we just don't have that kind of time. We're going to need to go _now_. With what info we have."

The general's forefinger tapped against his clean-shaven chin. "You have two targets."

"I do." Edward wiped a line of sweat from the back of his neck. "General, what I need is more people. Otherwise, we'll have the bad and worse choices of executing the two targets in series, which is shit in terms of strategy, and splitting up, which I refuse to do. I can't be at two places, but I need boots on the ground at that fuckin' compound doing heavy recon at the same time we're breaching that villa."

"You're sure on the villa?"

"Positive." To the captain's left, Jasper bobbed his head. "Looks like they're doing the planning out of there. Or at least that's where the heavy hitters are staying. We need to see what's in there – _who's_ in there. Plus, all we got on the compound is Colonel Laurent's word. They could be staging in multiple locations for all we know."

"You think he was lying?"

"No." Somewhere buried in that single word, Bella heard the same mental exhaustion she'd seen when Edward emerged from the bunker deep within the Iranian mountains, but it disappeared the second he went on in explanation. "But if they left him to do the clean up… he was just on the periphery. We still don't know what group we're dealing with and just what kind of reach they have."

Carlisle leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. "What else do you need?"

"A carrier or a LHA offshore to coordinate." With a swift glimpse at Emmett, Edward added, "Short distance air transport from there – something quiet enough we can drop close and get into the city on foot. Same for that compound."

"Done and done." When the general looked to his right, a twenty-something, dark-haired Marine read off the screen in front of her. "Sir, the _Richard Bonhomme_ is parked in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt right now. She's the closest. Three UH-1s. Six available AV-8Bs."

"That'll work." Edward checked his watch. "Who's close?"

For a split-second, the general's eyes danced, and Bella swore she caught a hint of sudden amusement in the his stern expression. A low chuckle from El'azar in the back just cemented it.

She felt more than saw Edward abruptly stiffen, and before she could twist around, he looked away, growling a harsh, "_Fucking Deltas," _under his breath. His fists, now balled tight enough his knuckles stretched white, flew back to his hips as he slowly shook his head.

That hint of amusement fell away. "Not my call, Captain," Carlisle told him. "Just got off the phone with SECNAV, and he just got off the phone with the Secretary. It's a done deal. SOCOM wants in."

Edward's jaw worked back and forth until he replied with a stiff, controlled, "Yes, sir."

"They'll meet you on the water and will be briefed beforehard. Before you ask, it's understood that you're on point."

The air seemed to shift again, taking on an almost electrified charge. The tiny hairs on Bella's arms rose like waiting for lightning. A second of sparked silence passed before the general cleared his throat and spoke again.

"And Captain?"

Edward glanced up, his features stark, shadowed, and merciless. "Sir?"

"I know you two don't get along, but try not to break Captain Black's face again."

In the background, El'azar howled.

.

.

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**Notes: **Thanks so much for reading and for all your lovely comments. I think I replied to everyone this last chapter. I'll do my best again, and I'll try to include a little teaser, too :) Next round… we'll start working our way back into some action. Gotta plan it before you do it and all that jazz. :)

**To the NSA spylords: **I hope you're enjoying all the "questionable" web searches I do for this story. [Note from Scooterstale: ROTFLMAO!]

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**Glossary: **

_AV-8B_ – or the McDonnell Douglas/Boeing Harrier II attack aircraft, also called "Jump Jets", which are capable of vertical take-offs and landings, are aircraft used by the USMC to provide close air support. They carry a range of armaments, including multiple hardpoints, rockets, air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles, as well as bombs. The AV-8B is currently slated to be replaced by the F-35B.

_SOCOM_ – stands for Special Operations Command, and is the command charged with overseeing multiple special operations forces within the various branches, including: the US Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (aka Delta Force) and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU, SEAL Team Six) which are part of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as well as the Army's Rangers and Green Berets, the Navy's SEALs, the Air Force's Special Operations Command, and the Marines' MARSOC regiment.

Note: while Edward's team is technically housed under Force Recon, not MARSOC, and is directed under the primary USMC structure, when the MARSOC regiment was created, most of the members were actually taken from Force Recon battalions. You can consider (especially) his team to be no different than any other Special Forces team in terms of function, capabilities, and general badassery.

_LHA _– stands for Landing Helicopter Assault, and is a hull class of amphibious assault ships. They're essentially like (somewhat) smaller versions of aircraft carriers and are capable of transporting multiple helicopters (attack and utility), USMC MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, and up to six AV-8Bs.

_SECNAV_ – Secretary of the Navy. The Corps, while a separate branch of the military, falls under the organizational structure of the Department of the Navy.

_UH-1N_ – also called Iroquois / Twin Huey is a type of utility helicopter manufactured by Bell. It's used by both the US Navy and USMC to transport equipment and people. Its replacement is the Bell UH-1Z Venom, which, by the way, is the utility variant of Alice's AH-1Z Viper attack helo.


End file.
